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University of California • Berkeley

University of California Bancroft Library/Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office

George R. Stewart
A LITTLE OF MYSELF

With an Introduction by
James D. Hart

An Interview Conducted by
Suzanne B. Riess

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal
agreement between the Regents of the University of California
and George R. Stewart, dated 12 May 1972, and by letter of
17 April 1973. The manuscript is thereby made available
for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publish, are reserved to George R. Stewart
during his lifetime. No part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication without the written permission of the Director
of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at
Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should
be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
and should include identification of the specific passages to
be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification
of the user. The legal agreement with George R. Stewart requires
that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in
which to respond.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SERIES PREFACE by Willa Baum 1

INTERVIEW HISTORY by Suzanne Riess 11

AUTHOR »S PREFACE by George R. Stewart Iv

INTRODUCTION by James D. Hart vl

INTERVIEW I, Family and Influences, high school, 1

discussion of writing methods and some discoveries
about writing.

INTERVIEW II, Study at Princeton, Berkeley, Columbia; 13
about the satisfactions of being a professor at a good
university; life in Berkeley in the 193°s; reviewers,
fans, and agents; some themes; Doctor's Oral; "Mapping

OUt" a bOOk; adversity. Reprint from Names. March 1961.

INTERVIEW III, Conversation about priorities and 57

motivation; the plays; abandoned projects; Fire. Earth
Abides ; teaching writing; more abandoned projects.

INTERVIEW IV, Some other writers and poets: Hemingway, 83
H.L. Davis, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost; "stages" of
writing a book (maybe); the collected work in retrospect.

INTERVIEW V, Bret Harte. Ordeal by Hunger. John Phoenix. 10?
East of the Giants. Doctor^ Oral. Take Your Bible in
Your Hand. Storm; some comments about publishers
interspersed.

INTERVIEW VI, Storm. Fire. Names on the Land. Man? 138
beginnings and endings of books; work for the Navy;
a story; marriage to Theodosia Burton; the Faculty
Club; loyalty oath crisis.

INTERVIEW VII, Earth Abides. Year of the Oath. Sheep Rock. 179
U.S. *K). American Ways of Life. Years of the City.
Piokett*s Charge. California Trail. Good Lives;
premonitions, clubs, aging.

INTERVIEW VIII, The Shakespeare Crisis; influences 224
of California and the West; the Bancroft Library;
oral history; literary influences; Not 3o Rich as
You Think; presses; "a good life"; the Book.

Answers to questions mailed to George Stewart dealing

with his travels and the idea of "going away to think." 250

INTERVIEW IX, with George R. Stewart and Charles L. Camp. 254
First meetings, almost; "the history of life"; folklore,
and the Drake Plate; hoaxmakers ; sideways to history;
Herbert Bolton; adventures with Charlie and George;
off the road; the house at Black Hook; later trips,
other companions; "...write the way George does"; the
library, then; the library, in transition; the Bancroft
Library; pleasures and pains of writing.

APPENDIX A On Awarding Honors, by George R. Stewart 299

APPENDIX B On Dishonesty, Seeming and Real, by 304

George R. Stewart

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 310

MAJOR WRITINGS 3H

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (to 1957) 312
INDEX

- ) .' : •

»;;

SERIES PREFACE

This interview with Professor George R. Stewart, Emeritus
Professor of English, and author, is one of the Diverse
Memoirs sponsored by the Friends of The Bancroft Library.
The Friends established the series of Diverse Memoirs so that
the Regional Oral History Office could record the recollections
of individuals in a variety of subject fields who have made
outstanding contributions to our knowledge of life in California
and the West.

George Stewart's selection as a memoirist by resolution
of the Council of the Friends of The Bancroft Library on
April 15, 1971, reflects the Council's recognition of his
singular position in the University world of teaching and
scholarship, and. in the world of popular literature. His
interest in the ways of life and the movement of history in
America, particularly in revealing the roots of California,
have made George Stewart an especially creative user of western
history resources. It is these qualities that make an interview
with George Stewart a logical choice for the Diverse Memoirs
Series, and an illuminating addition to oral history.

Willa Baum, Department Head
Regional Oral History Office

October 1972

^86 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

INTERVIEW HISTORY

George Stewart was interviewed for the Regional Oral
History Office in a series of meetings in the Stewart
apartment in San Francisco. The view of San Francisco, from
the 20th floor, was always worth a long look, and came as
a kind of grand climax to the trip from Berkeley. In fact,
here I thank George Stewart, author, for making such indelible
marks in my thinking about this part of the country that a
trip across the Bay Bridge — not to mention into the Sierra —
becomes a fascinating, distracting speculation into past and
future. He shares his country, and the earth abides indeed.

At the time of our planning for interviewing him, George
Stewart was making weekly trips to Berkeley to work in The
Bancroft Library with Harry Roberts, master bookbinder, and
to have lunch at the Faculty Club and meet appointments around
the campus. That was not the right day for us to interview,
it seemed, so San Francisco, in the afternoon, was settled
upon. (Before noon was for writing.) At one p.m. I would
arrive, migrate to the view, then attach the tape recorder;
perhaps to counter my "edge of the seat" posture, George
Stewart would settle way back into a cushiony armchair, feet
up, and we would interview. When it was over, Mrs. Stewart
usually Joined us for talk. Then, after an expert assessment
of the possibilities of entering the by then steadily-flowing
traffic to the Bay Bridge, I would depart.

The interviews took place irregularly in May, June, July,
September, and October 1971, and in February 1972. The
transcribing followed close on the heels of the interviews,
largely because of the transcriber's enthusiasm for the
subject. So when the interviews were over, the editing, by
the interviewer, took not very much time. It was completed
in the office in February 1972, and was then back into the
office again, with George Stewart's additions, in March 1972.
James D. Hart, The Bancroft Library's Director, was the first
reader, after Mrs. Stewart, and kindly agreed to write the
good friend's reminiscence that is the Introduction to the
volume.

r 5 ••

ill

The volume includes an additional reminiscing together
of George Stewart and his very longtime friend and co-explorer
in California history, Charles L. Camp, Emeritus Professor of
Paleontology, and inveterate bibliographer. After a pleasant
lunch one day in March, they talked about trips and memories
they shared. Recorded after the George Stewart interviews
were completed, the conversation has been left unlndexed, and
it is called Interview IX.

As George Stewart says, there is an autobiography in
the works, and that manuscript will one day be available in
The Bancroft Library, where several cartons of working
manuscripts, letters, business correspondence, fan mail,
reviews, unpublished fiction, dramatic works, and memos to
himself are already deposited.

Suzanne B. Riess, Interviewer
Regional Oral History Office

September 1972
^86 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

For this collaboration on my life I have supplied the
title. I must, indeed, make acknowledgement to Rudyard
Kipling, whose autobiography is called Something of Myself*

Whether as "a little" or as "something" the title is an
honest one. No autobiography can possibly present more than
a small fraction of the individual's life. To attempt thus
to write quantitatively would result in proliferation of details
until the finished work resembled the Encyclopedia Brltannloa.
To do so qualitatively, that is, by probing into the individual's
psyche and deeper mind, is also impossible. Any autobiography,
therefore, must consist of comparatively few and well-selected
external details, and perhaps of a few hesitant attempts to
probe beneath the surface of the mind.

In this particular series of Interviews, there have been,
moreover, some conscious limitations. We laid down some
ground-rules at the beginning.

I have already written an autobiographical account taking
me to the age of eighteen, and I expect to continue this
narrative until I reach the age of twenty-eight. Possibly,
even, I shall continue It still farther. This autobiographical
account has not been published, and may never be. In that
latter case, however, I shall try to see to it that the manu
script is deposited with my other papers in the Bancroft
Library.

To have included here an account of my first twenty-eight
years would have resulted in almost total repetition. Doubtless,
under the influence of Suzanne's skillful questioning, I should
have developed some ideas that I have not developed on my own.
Here, however, we seemed to face a situation which could result
only in diminishing returns with labor scarcely Justifying the
result.

There is also another autobiograplcal fragment (covering
roughly my twenty-fourth year), that is, my contribution to
the book There Was Light.

In addition, at the beginning I told Suzanne that I was
not greatly Interested in developing the theme of university
history — not for the lack of interest in itself, but rather

that others more knowledgeable in that field have already
contributed to this project. In addition, the small volume
that I did on the Department of English and The Year of trhe
Oath tell a good deal about my attitudes and possible con
tributions to higher learning and to the university.

We agreed that the chief emphasis should be upon my books,
particularly upon such "inside" items as would not be brought
out by reading of the books themselves or from reviews. I
mean — my methods of writing, attitudes toward the material,
my own appraisals of success or failure, and my personal
contacts resulting from the books.

Perhaps unfortunately, a large area lay between the
calculated omissions and the emphasized inclusions. As the
upshot, I may seem to be a disembodied spinner of words,
sitting at a typewriter or at a microphone. There is not
much about my family and friends, about my travels, hobbies
and general relaxations, about my teaching, about any deeper
philosophy that I may possess.

So be it I After all, the title is A Little of Myself.

As for Suzanne, by calling her a collaborator rather than
an interviewer I think that I express my appreciation of her.

Let me also express my thanks to the Friends of the
Bancroft Library, and particularly to their Council, who have
Invested their funds in this project. I hope that at some
time in the future their confidence will be repaid.

George R. Stewart

March 1972

San Francisco, California

INTRODUCTION

I have known George Stewart for almost forty years. He
has been a good friend and a wonderful colleague with whom
I've had long, happy, and diverse associations. Over the
years we have visited back and forth in one another's homes,
for long periods as often as once a week, and we have lectured
in one another's classes. We have worked together on
University committees and we have gone to the mountains to
follow pioneer trails and to fish together.

When I first got to know George Stewart I was a graduate
student at Harvard who came to ask him a question about his
recently published biography of Bret Harte. A little later,
in 1936, I became an instructor at Berkeley and he published
Ordeal By Hunger. During the years since then, I have continued
to read everything George Stewart has published; certainly
every book and important article or story. I've had the
privilege of reading most of his writings In manuscript and
discussing them with him before they were printed. But even
after such close association, this Regional Oral History Office
Interview adds a great deal to my knowledge and understanding
of George Stewart and his writings. What an illuminating
work it will be for those who have less personal knowledge of
him! It presents invaluable information from an author talking
fully and freely about his writing. Moreover, this is an
author who is not only a novelist, historian and biographer
but a critic too. Here is a man professionally devoted to
literary studies displaying his highly trained powers and
perceptions to analyze his own work.

Because George Stewart is remarkably thoughtful, clear
headed, honest and capable of self -discernment he creates a
very important document here, unlike and beyond the more
conventional biographical recollections that are the stuff
of most of the ROHO interviews. It is typical of him that
George Stewart should make his ROHO interview different from
others. He is a man possessed of a remarkably original mind;
everything he does is approached from his own special angle
of vision. The very diversity of topics and forms represented
in his books Is indicative of that. Indeed, even within his
own field of scholarship on English literature, he has been
quite astonishing in publishing on Malory and Bret Harte, on
Faulkner and William Henry Thomas, on Melville and Stevenson,
on Chaucer and George H. Derby. I don't suppose any other

:-!"•

vii

scholarly writer on Malory or Chaucer has even heard of Derby
or Thomes, except perhaps through Stewart's work. Yet George
Stewart's variety of Interests and range of knowledge is
matched by the equally great diversity of his points-of-view
toward his materials and the different techniques he has used.
He is always his own man, creating his own kind of work,
whether in that unusual novel Storm or in his poetic and
fiotive techniques in the handling of history in Ordeal By
Hunger.

Somewhere in these interviews George Stewart mentions
humorously that he makes his neuroses work for him. Well,
neuroses or not, he is always very secure as he moves from
one sort of thing to another, from one book to another, from
one genre to another, from one project to another, seemingly
without effort. Of course there's a lot of effort — of research
and thought, for example — but George Stewart is obviously so
certain of what he is doing that he is able to move in his
own way seemingly without problems and thus able to present
time and again a new point of view or open up a new subject,
book after book. Because we learn about how this occurs and
what he thinks of what he has done, this text is another
important contribution by George Stewart. I am delighted to
have been the first to read still another of his works, one
that I am sure will also be appreciated in many ways by other
readers yet to come.

James D. Hart
Professor of English
Director, The Bancroft Library

May 1972

The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California

INTERVIEW I, Family and influences, high school;
discussion of writing methods, and some discoveries
about writing. (Recorded May 26, 1971)

Riess: Reading through your Untitled Autobiography* made me
want to know how much study of psychology you had
done*

Stewart: Very little formal study, and not very much informal
study. My wife has taken care of that department.
She is a psychiatric social worker. But I have never
got into it very much, no.

Riess: Was interviewing people much a part of your writing?

Stewart: Yes, if you could call it interviewing — not for their
own personalities, but for what they knew about some
subject. I did a lot of that for Storm and Fire and
Earth Abides, on other books too. But it was mostly
a matter of going to a person and saying, "What do you
know about this particular thing?"

Riess: And not, "How did you feel about this or that?"
Stewart: No.

Riess: You are so understanding of yourself and your family,
and yet you seem to want to get on to talking about
places and away from people pretty quickly.

Stewart: Oh, I suppose my childhood, as I've said, was partly

unhappy, and we all want to shy away from those things.

Riess: You let the characters in your books have emotions.

*Refer to Author's Preface.

Stewart: There are certain things I shied away from, though, I
think, certain kinds of emotional involvements. I
think it's all right. I don't think everybody ought
to write about the same thing. So, I don't mind that.

Of course the thing I always had to fight — not
fight, exactly — but people were always telling me I
ought to put more about people in my books and I think
that was very bad advice. After all, every writing is
a kind of specialty, no writer writes about everything.
I was writing about certain types of things, and if
they didn't call for people in depth or in large
number I think that was Just something that I had to
my advantage, really.

Riess: What I was commenting on was that you had a lot of

insight, yet in the Autobiography you were reluctant
to indulge it.

Stewart: Yes, I think so, I think that's quite common, especially
with people with my background; that Presbyterian-
Scottish background is strongly disciplined, somewhat
repressed, and I think that's what you are seeing.

Biess: Do you remember mentioning showing off?

Stewart: I don't like to get into analysis that deep, and

you're never very good at analysing yourself, anyway.
The showing off, I suppose, might be an overcompensation
for being repressed; that would be a possibility.

You've got a real advantage there, having the
Aut obi ography .

Riess: Does it seem nasty? Picking out phrases and throwing
them back at you?

Stewart: No, I think it's fine, I'm interested to see what you
do pick out.

Riess: Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to find loopholes.
Stewart: No, I think it's that you're trying to fill gaps.

Riess: As I read on I felt that I recognized a theme in the
statement, "Give me a straightforward task and I can
buckle down and learn, even with no special facility."
It would seen that you have set yourself not Just
straightforward, but monumental, tasks, the dictionary
for instance.

.'" N • •-.•:

Bless:
Stewart :

Bless:

Stewart :

Stewart: Well, In that case It looks like a straightforward
task when you get through with It, and. sometimes It
Is a straightforward task. Take a book like Names on
the Land, for Instance, an Incredibly hard book to
conceive, because It didn't exist, Incredibly hard to
organize. Well, actually, writing a place-names
dictionary Is a straightforward Job, but calls for
tremendous efficiency.

Would you say that even as a child you liked the
challenge of a difficult task?

Yes, I suppose so, although I was not a particularly
early bloomer.

Did you have goals, as a child?

No, I had almost no goals at all. I had a terrific
struggle when I had to get some. I don't know as it
was worse than with other people, but I certainly did
not have a sense of goal, that I was going to be a
doctor, or a lawyer, or something like that.

Bless: Did your brother Andrew have ambitions?

Stewart: Yes, he did, he was going to be a millionaire. He
never made it, but he might have, if he hadn't died
rather young. His wife may be a millionaire right
now, with what he was worth.

He was always trying to get me to go along with
his plans. I could never go for it, at all. His
idea was that I was going to be a mining engineer.
He wanted to develop mineral properties, and I was
supposed to do the work, but I didn't go along with
that idea.

Riess: How about your parents' goals for you?

Stewart: They were very tactful about that. I think they

always wanted me to be a minister, but I don't think
their wanting was a very important influence. I
think they were happy with what I did.

Riess: There was always the assumption that you would go to
college.

Stewart: Oh, always. Again, to get into the environment, that
group is and was very strongly for a college education,

Stewart: Just what it was going to do for me, that wasn't clear.

Riess:
Stewart :

I think the influence of my brother was very
strong. I brought that out pretty well In the Auto
biography. And I think it led to a tremendous amount
of development, for the good or for the bad, and that
continued for a long time until it gradually worked
out. It continued even until the time I was married.
My wife knew my brother, and she couldn't stand him.
He has been dead about twenty years or so.

How did he do at school?

He was very bright, and had very good grades, although
he was never Interested in the studies as I was. He
was much more athletic than I was. He was a very
active fellow, who didn't make a tremendous success
out of his life by his own standards, but he probably
would have if he hadn't died so young.

(I don't know why I should be talking about him.)
He had a way of looking down on all technical skills,
he wanted to be where the money was, where he could
get it as it went by. Well, it was an age when John
D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan were the heroes.

After he graduated from college, he and a friend
who had a lot of money — Andy was always tied up with
people with a lot of money — made a trip to South
America, to Argentina, which was a tremendous trip in
those days. They wanted to import Chinese labor, but
the Argentines wanted nothing to do with that.

He was always full of big schemes, like that,

Why?

Oh, I think the idea that my father lost most of his
money was important. That makes a difference in a
family; you become much more conscious of money, much
more than if you never had any money.

Did Andrew read much?

Yes, he did, though his reading was somewhat
differently focused than mine. We both read the Henty
books, but Andrew also read Alger, you know, the Alger
books, about how a boy makes money.

Hiess:

Stewart:
Rless:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

Hiess:
Stewart:

Bless:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

Do you think that boys reading those books of heroes
would be making the comparisons with their own
dullish lives. I mean, do you think that Alger for
a boy Is Inspirational, or does It make him think,
"Wow, my life Is nothing."

No, I don't think a child has that reaction you're
speaking of, that's much more the adult.

I guess It's like reading
expect to come back.

"escape" literature.

You

Much escape literature Is full of such horrors that
you make a double escape when you come back, that Is,
you escape from the storybook into your dull but safe
world.

When the pages of the Autobiography end you are on a
camping trip, at the end of your residence in Azusa.
Was that your first time out in rugged country?

Yes, it was, at least overnight. I had been out other
times, like the trip when I killed the rattlesnake.
People didn't do it as much in those days as they do
now.

When such things happened to you did you have a wish
to write it down? Put it in a diary?

No, not at all. I have practically nothing in the way
of diaries except day by day notes when I was on trips,
records of my European trips, and more recent trips.
I never have enjoyed writing down day-to-day records.
But I have a good memory, so that I can store up some
thing to write about.

So there wasn't much writing as a child.

Not particularly, no. Of course I, like every
American, dreamed of writing a great American novel.
I had that to some extent, but I didn't try very hard.

Often people have that wish to write a book after
going through the experience of war.

Yes, although I never had the real experience of war.
I was in the Army for two years, but I didn't get out
of this country.

tO £-3

mess: Oh, I had thought that your disability, that you
relate In There Was Light, was gassing.*

Stewart: No, pneumonia.

Bless: I recall you brought it up In that book, pointing out
how surprising It was that with that In the background
you lasted so long.

Stewart: Well, it was pretty unbelievable. I don't deny it.

In fact, my whole medical history is kind of a cliff-
hanger. Every time I've come to the end of my tether,
along comes penicillin or something and pulls me out
of it. [laughing]

About 1935» for instance, I was in a bad way,
and Just about that time the sulfa drugs came in and
pulled me out of that. And I didn't have to have
the operation on my lungs until after they perfected
the technique. I had to have a lobe of my lung cut,
all from this pneumonia. And if it had had to be
done ten years earlier, they probably wouldn't have
been able to take it out.

I've never been a robust person, but I have a
tough constitution and I can recover well. I'm not
one of these people who've never been sick.

Riess: Now, in the Autobiography, you had gotten into high
school.

Stewart: Yes, in the next chapter I will bring out about my

high school education in general, and. what I got out
of it, and what kind of institutions we had in those
days.

I'm working on that chapter in my autobiography.
Again, like my first year at Berkeley, my last year
in high school was a very remarkable year. That's
interesting to work on. On the other hand, my college
years I think are much less important. My pattern
worked out that It wasn't the important period in
my life.

Riess: Is it when you get to writing these things down that
the memories come back and you realize it was
remarkable, or did you always feel that it was?

*See footnote, p. 20.

Stewart: I realize it a little more sharply when I think back.
I have some documents on this. I have the little
high school magazine and the annual that came out.
Those focus my mind. It was a year in which I had
a great deal of luck. In some ways it was bad for
me i because it came a little too easily almost. I
never had any luck in college, really, I should say.
Maybe I will think differently when I get to looking
at it again. Of course, adversity's good for a man
too.

It's interesting having these two books, the
magazine and the annual. My father got them bound up,
you see, because I was mentioned in them. Being a
proud father, he had these bound; so they're all very
well preserved. There are various references to me,
which are interesting. I expanded from that. It was
interesting looking through the pictures of the class.
Many people look familiar still. People I hadn't
thought of for fifty years, you know. "There's some
one — oh yesf" Sometimes I even know his name. Just
one Negro in that class, and one Japanese, in Pasadena
in 1913.

Riess: How did they fit in?

Stewart: Oh, all right, I guess. I didn't know either of them
particularly. I think the girl, the colored girl,
was very undistinguished as far as I know. I don't
know what the Japanese was like. I think he was quite
bright, as they generally are. He figures in the
book occasionally. He wrote a short story which was
published in it.

Riess: What were the predictions for you in high school?

Stewart: Well, that was very amusing, really. That was part
of the luck. I made my whole reputation In that
class by writing a topical poem. It was no good as
a poem. It wasn't supposed to be, but it fit into
the period of the times just right apparently, and
in an assembly one of the teachers told the presiding
officer I had written this and I ought to read it to
the assembly. So I read it to the whole assembly,
to tremendous applause! [laughing] I was a marked
man forever after in that school. That was the year
I graduated. It was quite a big high school, about

Stewart: 1500 students I think, even in those days,
a four year high school, of course, then.

It was

[Interruption]

[continuing an interrupted conversation about book
binding and other interests]

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

I have this great love of working with my hands. Ifve
showed you the bookbinding. And I've done some wood
working; the bookcase in the other room — I made that
years ago.

It's hard to imagine you finding the time, particularly
when you were publishing almost a book a year for a
while. In fact, I don't know how you did write as
much as you did in those years when you were teaching
too.

I don't know either. I have one theory, though.
I was trying to do [telephone interruption]...

What

(I can't talk over the telephone with ease, and
I always blame it on President MoKinley, as I told
in the Autobiography — the first news we ever received
over the telephone was that McKinley was shot.)

Anyway, what I was saying was that many writers
agonize in the writing of a book, but I always enjoyed
the process partly I guess because there was always
the sense of achievement.

You did have it organized with half a year teaching,
half a year writing?

I did for a while, yes, but actually I think I did
my best writing, and my most writing, before that
time. I didn't start that half time arrangement until
about 1950.

•

Hiess: So how did a day go, back in those days when you
were really writing so much?

Stewart: I tried to write in the morning, and then, as I say,
when I got tired of writing I could go down to the
University and teach.

Riess: And you had to do a lot of reading and research to do
your writing.

Stewart: I did that largely in the evenings.

And there again I went and picked out what I
needed, and not too much, although that's dangerous,
and not to be recommended. You may run short. It's
dangerous to try to get Just enough and not too much,
because you may miss some things you should get. Of
course in a novel it doesn't really matter — the
decision to not write more about something than you
can avoid — whereas in a non-fiction work you can be
criticized for rejecting some matter which should have
been treated.

Riess: But I do think your novels lend themselves to questions
of What About This and What Happened Then?

Stewart: Yes, but those are not really legitimate questions.
A novel may be a good novel, or it may be an
unsatisfactory novel for a particular reader, Just as
some people criticize my books because they felt they
didn't get enough about people, and that's legitimate
criticism too, from their point of view, but it really
isn't from the author's point of view.

All of my novels had scenes that were written
and then dropped out, and in a sense they still exist,
and the writer may have all kinds of ideas about his
characters, and about incidents, but he can't get to
them all. What I'm saying is that the measure of a
work of art consists in what is, and what is not there
is not really a legitimate question. Sometimes you'll
say a novel doesn't have enough depth or background,
or detail, but that again is from the standpoint of
the existing book.

In Fire, for instance, I drew that whole map,
with great detail — the Bancroft Library has it, I
believe. And a lot of the places on that map I never
mentioned in the book. They were there in case I

.;.. 1

•

Stewart: needed them.

HI ess: The copy of Fire that I read didn't have the map in
it anymore, since the cover pages were redone.
Actually, the contour of the fire was easily visualized
because of your description.

Stewart: Well, there's a question about maps in books, Just

like Illustrations, whether they are a good thing or
not in novels.

Hiess: They imply that you will need them.

Stewart: And then the book is likely to be published without
them in paperback or something like that. I always
wrote them with the idea that maps and pictures were
not really necessary.

Riess: Rereading Fire, I was really struck by the suspense
and terror that you communicated about the impending
disaster. Do you end each chapter with a cliffhanger?

Stewart: To some extent, yes. My theory of the chapter and
paragraph is that they provide points of emphasis,
because of the white space. I've had a lot of fun
with that, as in Fire where the chapter ends (in the
middle of a sentence) at midnight of one day, and
begins immediately, the next day.

Fire and Storm were written with such terribly
complicated topographical background that I had to
keep a clear chronology to work with, to get one
thing after another. The geography skips all over
the place, particularly in Storm.

Riess: Picking up all the tag ends of the action, does that
happen easily?

Stewart: That's quite difficult, and I made out an elaborate
diagram, particularly in Storm. The time-span was
twelve days, yet I didn't know at first how long it
would be. It took me a long time before I could work
out my basic background, which was the storm itself,
in the twelve days, and then I had to work backwards.
It was really quite complicated.

Riess: HOW much real stuff did you have at hand, like the
log of a weather bureau, or something over a given
period of time?

Stewart: None. I had all the cooperation I needed from the
weather bureau, but I didn't have a log. My storm
was a fictional storm, and the fire a fictional fire.

Fire was in only eleven days. It started out to
be twelve days, like Storm, — they were companion pieces-
but I didn't really need twelve days, and I didn't
want to Just put another day in to make it run parallel
to Storm.

Riess: Do you like the words "documentary novel," used to
describe your writings?

Stewart: Not particularly. I guess it implies that you have
worked from non-fictional materials, and actually I
always kept the distinction there, and made it a
fictional fire. Lots of people confuse that distinc
tion. Ordeal by Hunger is non-fiction and it's hard
to take that so many people think that Is a novel.

That was very valuable training for writing,
though, because that's a very complicated book, many
sides to the account. It uses a technique that most
historians have not known how to use — I don't know
how I learned it — a kind of novelistic technique.

Riess: The technique of weaving.

Stewart: Yes, I think that's a good term for it.

Riess: In Ordeal by Hunger did you begin your interest in

pursuing trails, in writing about people's wanderings.

Stewart: Well, I sometimes wonder how I got so interested in
writing about trails, in people getting from one
place to another.

Riess: I can see how your books would lead off into the
next.

Stewart: Well, I don't think most people do feel that. I

think they feel more the variety. And to a certain
extent I do too. And I think that's far more
interesting, as a writer, that there is no thread of
development.

Riess: The thread of development I see is the environmental
statement.

Stewart: Well, I do feel for myself that I have chosen subjects
for the variety. It was hard for me, for Instance,
to do Fire, because it was a kind of repetition. But
in writing Storm I discovered the fact that you can
write about the infinite divisibility of time—the
wire falls, and then the wire falls further T— and that
was very — I hate to use the word exciting, but that
was very exciting.

Hiess: I wonder how you feel about the word "tricks," which
you sometimes use in talking about your work.

Stewart: I suppose it's like what people mean when they use

the phrase tour de force, referring to my work, which
I don't appreciate. Oftentimes what they mean is
that I have used an original form, and "I shouldn't
like this, but I do."

Riess: Your form is original. Did you ever start out to
write Just the great American novel?

Stewart: Well, East of the Giants was that, I guess, a fairly
conventional sort of novel. After Ordeal by Hunger
I knew I could write, but the trick was to supply the
motive power. The great difference between fiction
and non-fiction is that you have to supply your own
motive power. It's very difficult, and a lot of
people think fiction is easier to write than non-
fiction, but they are absolutely wrong. Non-fiction
is easier to write; it's difficult enough to write
well, but it's easier.

In East of the Giants I took the Western cliche,
which is the simple situation of the blonde American
man who comes west and falls in love with the dark-
haired Spanish beauty, and I reversed that. I had a
blonde heroine, a blonde American girl who came out
and married a dark man.

INTERVIEW II, Study at Princeton, Berkeley,
Columbia; about the satisfactions of being a
professor at a good university; life in Berkeley
in the 1930s; reviewers, fans, and agents; some
themes; JDoctor's Oral; "mapping out" a book;
adversity! (lie corded June 16, 1971)

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :
Riess:
Stewart:

I'm a great pencil sharpener. My wife never sharpens
pencils, and then I sharpen hers. Can't stand a dull
pencil, takes all the cut out of my mind, with a dull
pencil. A sharpened pencil is something you can make
a mark with.

How do you work? At a desk with a pile of new white
paper and a lot of pencils?

Well, I never do that. I never sit at a desk and
write really. I always sit in a chair like this, and
use a board, and write with a pencil. But of course
I've done most of my work in the last twenty years

with dictation.

•

But you get into a particular place that's your
working place?

Oh — well, I can be pretty adaptable on that, but I
usually have a regular place, yes.

Now, what were you planning to do, when you were at
Princeton?

I went to college, I guess like most people, partic
ularly in those days, without any very definite idea
of what I wanted to do. There was this old idea of
course, if you had a good old classical education,
that was good for you, which I think was fairly all
right. It probably was. I majored in English,
actually, which is the line I followed, but I didn't

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart

Riess:

Stewart:

do it with any great conviction. I enjoyed that
kind of work. I had what was called an honors
course in English. They had an experiment then. We
had a group of five students who in the last two
years kept together all the time. That was, I think,
a very good arrangement. We had the same professor
all the time — T. M. Parrott.

I can't remember now who all those people were.

I was trying to think the other day.
those things after a while.

In what sense did you work together?

You do forget

We met in the evening, I think about every two weeks.
Somebody would read a paper on an assigned topic,
and then we'd discuss that, Just like a seminar class.
It was in the Victorian period. It was a very enjoy
able piece of work. I remember it with a lot of
pleasure, and I knew the professor very well, of
course.

Then I had other courses,
instead of the usual five.

We took four courses

Harvard around that time was going through changes in
their educational system. What were things like at
Princeton?

It was not so very different from what the system is
now in a great many places, or was until recently.
That is, you had a core, a required core of material,
and you had to elect a department for your upper
division work. Actually, what I did at Princeton was
very much the same system as what they were doing at
California in my day when I was there teaching. I
think it's changed some now under recent student
pressure.

The work in the freshman and sophomore years was
pretty much required, and then after that you elected
a department and had some requirements in that, and
some elect ives. I got a good deal out of my years at
Princeton. I think I would have got that out of
other colleges too. I of course got a good professional
background in English work. That was very good there,
and I was able to carry that on into graduate work
very easily.

Rless: Were you doing much writing?

Stewart: A good deal. You see, classes were fairly small

there. The preceptorial system was in effect then
and you had a small group which met as well as a
lecture system. That was the great change that
Woodrow Wilson put in at Princeton, the preceptorial
system. That was pretty much still intact at the
time I went there.

[additional material dictated 15 March 1972]

In college I did very little writing except that
which came along in connection with my courses, in
what might be called an undergraduate scholarly tone.
I did an honors thesis at the end of the course which
was a study of the medieval element in Victorian
literature, and it ran to ^0,000 words. I don't know
what became of it. Probably it got thrown out some
where when I went into the Army Just at the end of my
college course. I wrote some poetry, and published
two little poems in the college literary magazine,
but I never was known around the campus as an author.
I experimented with writing a short story or so as I
went along. Nothing of importance.

I took only one course in writing, and, as a
matter of fact, almost nothing in that way was offered
at Princeton at that time. Just in my senior year
they established a course in what would now be called
Creative Writing, and I took the section on verse-
writing with Professor Arthur Kennedy, who was himself
a poet of some standing.

There was only one other student in the course,
and we went out to Professor Kennedy's house one
evening a week to meet there with him, as was the
common custom with the preceptors of that time, to
hold the classes at their houses. (A very good system
with small classes, such as we had then.)

The course was well "structured" as they would
say these days. We had regular assignments for
experiments in trying different kinds of verse. Once
there would be an assignment in blank verse, and once
in disyllabics, and so forth. We had very pleasant
meetings, and I enjoyed the course very much. It was
not a line that I followed later on, and I would

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Rless:

probably have done better to have taken the course
In the short story, [end dictated material]

Then I got a great deal out of the electives
that I took, which I selected carefully. I've always
thought of education — even then I thought of It — as
opening up new fields to the mind. I had, for
instance, a course in geology and a course in biology,
as they called it, a very broad course in biology.
I had a course in Romanesque and Gothic architecture,
and two or three others, which opened up a great deal
to me. I've always enjoyed new fields being opened
up. Remember in my Autobiography, in the first
chapter, about looking through the window? That was
in a sense what I mean.

So you didn't settle for a "gentleman's C" when you
went to Princeton?

Oh, no. I got a few bad grades, because I did elect
things around that way. Not really bad, but not as
good as I might. But I had a very high average as
far as grades were concerned. I had a Junior year
Phi Beta Kappa, which was pretty hard to get. I
graduated third in the class. If I hadn't wandered
around taking some of those outside courses, I would
have been higher,

Do you remember any particularly good advisors,
guidance that you got during those years?

Stewart: The professor with whom we worked in this small class
was Professor Parrot t, who was a good man. I got a
lot out of him. Then J. Duncan Spaeth was a great
character on the faculty. He coached the crew besides
being professor of English, and I knew him pretty
well. I got quite a good deal out of him. On the
whole, however, I've never been the kind of student
who was taken up by a professor, and so I don't look
upon my education as particularly tied up with
individual professors. I've thought about that, and —
see, right now I'm beginning to think about doing
this chapter in my Autobiography, so I had to think
a little bit along these lines — I've never been a
protlge. I always worked on own, really, and
professors didn't mean too much to me. The same thing
was true of my graduate work. I did it, and brought
it in, and they said, "Okay." But they didn't give
me much direction. That's a great strength, but of

•

.
.

Stewart: course it's also to some extent a weakness.

mess: It sounds like you were going in directions of your
own.

Stewart: I don't know about that. I had a fairly conventional
course. I wasn't in rebellion against the establish
ment particularly. But I Just — within my own limits —
I Just was working on my own.

Riess: Your interest in metrics must have begun back then.

Stewart: I think it did, yes. I think that was a natural

interest I had. You're thinking of my Ph.D. thesis,
and the other book I did on metrics, yes, and I did
several articles also.

Riess: What was it about metrics that interested you?

Stewart: Oh, I suppose a liking for poetry as it existed in

those days. Of course, Jo (Miles) thinks I'm. a great
enemy of poetry, but I'm not really. Just certain
kinds of poetry I don't like. Again, there, I had a
kind of original idea, worked mostly on my own, and
I didn't owe much of anything to any professor on
that thesis.

Riess: I wonder if in your interest in place names, and

naming, the sense of the rhythm and metrics is very
important?

Stewart: I think it is, yes. There's a certain romantic sense
about the names, which is very strong with me. I
love passages in poetry that are full of proper names.
Some of them go way back. There's a passage in the
Homeric hymns, a Hymn to Apollo, which is built up
about place names. I love that.

Riess: Were you reading poetry in earlier years than college?

Stewart: Yes, the sort of thing you'd expect. Macaulay's Lays
of Ancient Romet and the Ancient Mariner, and things
like that.

Hiess: Did you "declaim" — that is the word for standing up
and doing iff

Stewart: No, not much. I've never been much good at that. I

don't have a very good voice, and I did it mostly Just

17a

Reprinted from NAMES

VOLUME 9 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 1961

Interview

GEORGE B. STEWART ON NAMES OF HIS CHARACTERS

[This interview was recorded on June 29, 1959, at Verkeley, California. The inter-
viettee is George R. Stewart (indicated below by the. initial S). The interviewer it Joseph
M. Backus (indicated below by the letter I). The original interview hat been edited, and
the final text hat been checked by Mr. Stewart for accuracy. This it the second such
interview to appear in Names, the first having been with C. S. Foretter (Vol. 1, [1953],
pp. 245 to 251)].

I. Mr. Stewart, the readers of Names know your work on place names and other
actual names. But, as a novelist, you have also worked with character names. Can
you tell mo how many novels you have written T

S. That's an easy question for a first one. I havo written (even novels.

I. Can you give mo an idea how many character names in all you have originated
in your novels T

S. Just for a very quick estimate, I should say that I might have applied at
least two hundred fictional names for characters, and in addition there would b«
perhaps half as many names for animals, ships, and especially for places.

I. You have probably mode up more place names than most novelists have.
Wouldn't you Bay so ?

S. Yes, I suppose that has been something of a specialty of mine, probably
because I have boon particularly interested in place names.

I. I remember you have also named storms, forest fires, years — and probably
some other inanimate objects as well. But before considering such names, I would
like to ask about the names of human characters. In looking over your novels, I
have found that Doctor's Oral contains what I suspect to be th» largest number of
character names — forty. Have you used any more than that in any one of your
other novels T

S. I should think that there would bo moie in Fire and The Years of the City —
and certainly so, if you count names of places.

I. In any case — since, in dealing with academic life, Doctor's Oral comes close
to your own experience — I should imagine its character names would have to havo
been chosen in a way that would insure their not being identified with actual per
sons. To achieve this end, was any system of coinage used for these names ?

S. I should not say that there was any actual system used. I took care with the
unpleasant characters to have names which probably cither did not exist or would
be very lare. For instance, with Professor Martiuess I made up a name which as
far as I know docs not exist, but which in my mind was a kind of combination of
Martin and Martinez. It was also suitable enough, because of being thus made up, it
was a somewhat exotic name for an exotic character.

I. Another unlikeable faculty member, Professor Brice, however, bears an
actual surname that is not uncommon. Did this name cause the character to be
identified with any real person T

17b

54 Interview

S. Not so far iui I know. The whole name, J. MacNair lirico, is an unlikely
combination, and ulso seemed suitable for tho character, being a somewhat gadget/
name for a rather gadgety i>erson.

I. For tliis novel, did you draw from lists of actual names, such as telephone
directories or college catalogues — as novelists are sometimes said to do J

S. I don't think that I have ever used such lists. In The Years of the City, I
compiled one for myself. That story deals with a very early time in Greek history
when I would have had some difficulty knowing which names were in use. I went
through some works which deal with this little known period, and from them
compiled a list of about a hundred names actually recorded from that time. I kept
this list handy when writing the book, and generally picked iny names from it.

I. Did you over make use of tho names of friends or actual persons for fictional
purposes ?

S. Yes - but I think in only the two novels, Fire and Earth Abides. For Fire,
I had to draw a detailed fictional map of the whole region, and this involved supply
ing fictional place names. I tried to proportion these so that tho name-pattern would
give tho effect that might be expected in the region — that is, there were some
descriptive names, some incident names, and so forth. In this way, T used the names
of a number of my friends — on Hart Creek, for example — and they all seemed
quite pleased with it. Rather amusingly, however, one of them told me ho was dis
appointed because his name appeared on tho map, but he did not find it in the text.
The reason, of course, was that I had put the names all on the map, but it was not
actually needful to uso that particular name in the story. I also made a few references
to professors in the University in that book, who are real professors, also my friends.
In Earlh Abides, I used my own house in the story. At that time, I lived on San
Luis Road in Berkeley, and so I used San Lupo Drive. That made it seem natural
to refer to some of my neighbors, who lived on tho street, and so, incidentally, the
Hart name came in again. One of the boys there aftei wards yelled at ine reproach
fully because I had put the Hatficlds' cat in the book, but did not mention his own
dog. Hutsonville in that book has also been noted by one of my friends as being
named for him.

I. Sometimes in your novels the name of a character appears without intro
duction, as the first word. But tho chief character in Earth Abides is known only as
"ho" until he identifies himself by means of his signature after the first four pages.
Can you tell the purpose of withholding the name ?

S. I think that I withheld the name because here and elsewhere throughout
that book I was trying to universalize the effect as much as possible, in order to
make the reader feel some identification with the chief character.

I. Another question about the same character — why did you choose the unusual
imme Ishcrwood Williams for tho character who survives a cosmic disaster and
becomes the ro-founder of the human race ?

S. You are getting, now, really deep into professional secrets. If I was going to
give him the name Ishcrwood, a very uncommon one, 1 would naturally balance it
to some extent by giving him a common family name, so that his full name would
not seem entirely impossible. The real question, however, involves Jsherwood,
though ho is not called that in the book. Ho is known as Ish, and Isherwood was

17c

Jntrruiew 55

the name Hint I gave liitn so t hut ho would have a name from which Jih could bo
derived. The use of Ish itself is merely a variant of the device frequently used by
novelists and dramatists to givo their characters universality, Although at the same
time to conceal it, so that the name becomes a private, or genii-private, code. In
short, ish in Hebrew means "man."

I. Ish'g wife is called Em, short for Emma. Docs this name have significance T

S Well, the Hebrew for woman is isfiah, which is, incidentally, now the trade
name of a widely advertised perfume. But I could not very well have Ish roeet a girl
named Ishah. Em, however, is really a mother-character, and em means "mother"
in Hebrew.

I. Are there any more names in Earth Abides that have similar significance T

S. Most of them do not. The only other significant name is Ezra, which means
"helper" in Hebrew. In fact, near the end of the book, Ish refers to Ezra as "my
good helper."

I. Did any of your readers understand the significance of these names T

S. At least one person wrote me. I think he was a rabbi. Rather interestingly, he
inquired if I knew what the names meant, or had stumbled on them by accident.

I. Do names in your other novels have any special significance ?

S. I have avoided giving names, like Mr. Goodhart or Miss Flutters, which label
character crudely. If I have dono thia, it has at least been covered up by some
foreign languugo and hat) not been, I hope, too obvious. On the whole, I think that
my uso of names has become more froo and imaginative, as my novels have pro
gressed and I got a greater feeling of competence in what I was doing.

I. Do you think that moving in this direction represents an improvement in
novelistic technique ?

S. I am hardly the one to make such a judgment. Probably the reason why I
have moved in this direction has been that I was trying, more and more, to uni
versalize the experience in my novels. In The Years of the City, I used a device which
one reviewer spotted and did not like. That novel is in four parts, each one centered
in a particular character, who is in each case the son of the preceding one. As the
reviewer noted, the names of these characters ran in a series A, B, C, D — for their
initials. (Actually, I suppose it should have been A, B, G, D, since that is the order
of the Greek alphabet.) I still treasure the detail, however, that the reviewer did not
notice there are five in the series, because there is finally a character who is supposed
to carry the story on still farther, and his name begins with an E. These names also
had some slight significance, or suggestion of it, as is pointed out in the book itself
here and there. Archias, while a real Greek name of the early period, suggests the
beginning, as we sec in the word "archaic" itself. Bion, his son, has a name derived
from a word meaning "life," and it is suggested in the book that he is given this
name as a good omen, since he is born to his parents as a first child — when his father
is already old — and so there is the particular need that ho should cling to life. It is
also a good name in the course of the novel, since Bion represents the strength of
the city. Callias is from the word meaning "beauty," and this suggests that the city
has left its period of strength and is moving on to a kind of aesthetic middle age.
Diothemis is probably rather bad Greek, but I coined it with the suggestion that it
would mean the judgment of God, since Diothemis lives in the time of the city when

17d

56 Inter oicw

it is approaching destruction, partly because of the sins of the fathers. The last one
is Eschatz, which is obviously not good Greek. I used it to iuggC8t that things had
gone to pieces very badly, and that this barbiirisra (really a mimmdoi stood baby
name) was to bo connected with the Greek word meaning "last."

I. Can you toll me something about the name of the city itself - Phrax T

S. More time and thought went into the selection or fabrication of that mono
syllabic name than the reader might imagine. In the first place, there is, as far as I
know, no such name in the records of antiquity. For my city, I wanted a "practical"
name, that is, one which would not give too much trouble in pronunciation and one
which would yield a good ethnic name - that is, Phragians - for the citizens of that
city. I also did not want a Greek name, because the Greeks very rarely used a Greek
name for one of their cities. So 1 made up a name from mere sounds, with tlio
suggestion that this was some barbarous local name which the Greeks had taken over.
There is a scene in the novel describing how they learned what the name of the place
was. I used the same general practice for the other place names of the novel — that
is, they are not Greek and have no meaning.

I. When you plan a novel, do you work out the place names and the names of
characters before you begin to write T

S. Yes, I do. Of course, in writing a novel, one often has to use names for charac
ters who may just appear incidentally, and it is not ]>osMiblo to think up names for
them all in advance. On the whole, I would say that this is a good practice — to have
names worked out ahead of time in so far as it is {wssible. When you are using a map,
for instance, it becomes almost obligatory to get the names on the map proj>erly, or
you will get into difficulty and inconsistency before the end of the book.

I. Among the characters in your novels, do you have a favorite name ?

S. There are many such names — ones that I like. But at this time I might say
that I think anyone — most of all perhaps the author himself— must have difficulty
in separating his feeling about the name from his feeling about the character. If
a character comes off successfully, you have a feeling that the name, too, comes off
successfully, and so is a suitable name. In fact, this brings me to say something
about characters' names more in general. Although there would seem to be "suit
able" names, the matter is not as simple as some people think. It seems to me
something of a chicken-egg problem — as to which came first. It is like the argument
as to whether a certain line of poetry is a good line because of its haunting rhythm or
whether wo think it to have a haunting rhythm because it is a good line to begin
with. But to return to characters - when Shakespeare wrote a tragedy about Ham
let, did he think that Hamlet was a particularly good name for a tragic hero ? After
Hamlet proved to be a supremely successful tragedy, the name, by that very process,
became a suitable one for a tragic hero. If I/amlel had been a comic play, doubtless
Hamlet would be a good name for a comic character. In other words, if a character
comes off successfully, you naturally begin to think that his name is a suitable name
for that sort of character.

I. Can you give an example from your own work T

S. Well, a very minor character who appoars in both Storm and Fire is Johnny
Martley —

17e

Interview 57

1. Why Ho you call him Johnny instead of John ?

S. OJi, just because ho ia never mentioned except as Johnny — though that, of
course, brings up the much larger question as to how much existence a character
may be said to have in a novelist's imagination aside from what goes on pajjcr.
1 suppose on tho books of the utility company for which he worked ho was carried as
John, but he is always Johnny in tho novel. And since Johnny Martley makes a
pair of good trochees, that is undoubtedly one reason I think of it as a suitable name
for a character who had a lot of energy and a certain amount of jauntincss.

I. Gelett Burgess, in discussing character names, indicated that he used geo
graphical prefixes and suffixes to suggest a character's aristocratic background. Did
you have any similar ideas in using Hawkhurst, or Holtby ?

S. Everyone is likely to have certain associations with name-elements. I do not
think that 1 have any particular predilection for names containing elements re
ferring to place, even though I used those you mention. I think I have used such
names somewhat commonly, because, by taking the elements of names apart, and
then reeombining them, you are often able to coin a name which seems quite familiar,
and yet may not exist at all — and is therefore a safe name for a novelist to use.
Holtby may be an example. It looks like a regular name, but I don't think you will
find it in the telephone book.

I. Can you say which of your names have been best accepted by readers ?

S. I have always been pleased with the acceptance of Ponderosa National
Forest. The. name is in itself an obvious one, since "ponderosa" is the name of a
common typo of pine. To create the forest, I shoved the Plumas and Tahoc forests
apart, and put the Ponderosa between them. The name was successful enough to
make people stop in at the southern-mast ranger station of the Plumas Forest and
ask where the Ponderosa Forest was. They had been driving north through tho
Tahoe, expecting to come to tho Ponderosa, but suddenly found themselves in the
Pluraaa.

I. In an article in Names [3(1955), p. 34], Erwin Gudde indicated that Storm
established a precedent that meteorologists have since followed in assigning girls'
names to hurricanes.

S. I believe that is correct. Tho question might still be raised, however, why I
called the storm Maria. As I have indicated in an introduction I wrote for a later
edition of the novel, the name is to be pronounced in the English and not in tho
Spanish manner. For some reason, quite possibly because of the sound, Maria has
come to have in English a certain loud and boisterous quality. At least, it had that
association for me, and I think that this U why the storm got the name it did. . . .
Going back to your earlier question, I suppose that I would really have to say, on
my own premises, that Maria is my favorite name. At least, it seems to be the most
successful ono» It has been used in a song-hit, in the line "They call the wind Maria."
I have also heard on the radio that "the storm was a regular Maria" and seen such
references as "Maria has become a part of American folklore."

I. Is there anything you would liko to add generally about the names in your
novels ?

S. I could certainly say a great deal more, but I think that perhaps Maria is as
good a name as any with which to end.

Stewart: In my own mind. I still do it, now, still repeat

lots of poetry to myself. Usually stuff I've known
for many years. I've found that my mind doesn't pick
it up as easily as it used to. What I know is mostly
what I've had for many years. But I still like the
sound of the words, and the way they fall into
rhythm.

Riess: During the years you were in the Army, 1917-1920, did
you keep studying on your own?

Stewart: By that time I had pretty well decided to go into

graduate work in English, and I kept on reading along
those lines. I read Tom Jones for the first time, I
remember, while I was in the Army. My service was all
in this country, and books were fairly easy to get.
We usually had some kind of camp library, and you had
a good deal of time in the Army like that, not out on
active duty. So I got a great deal of reading done.
I even studied Anglo-Saxon. I did the first course
in Anglo-Saxon by myself in the Army. I never had a
beginning course when I was at college, but I went
into the Beowulf class at the graduate level at
Columbia, and did the work successfully.

Riess: You Just had a textbook, and worked your way through?

Stewart: Yes. Of course I don't think that's too good, because
you get a kind of skewed knowledge. I think you
ought to have the formal discipline. But I've worked
out a lot of stuff by myself.

Over the course of the years I have taught myself
a great many subjects, but I am not really sure that
I am particularly outstanding in that respect, for I
think that a great many people do that as they go
along, if they are professors or otherwise Indulge
in intellectual work. I have never had a class in
Spanish, but I have taught myself pretty well to read
for scholarly purposes. I have also taught myself
enough to do something with Portuguese and Dutch. I
taught a Middle English course for many years, but
the only work I had in Middle English in class was
a course or two in Chaucer. Even in American literature
I was largely self-taught.

In the study of place names I suppose that I am
one of the leading scholars of the world, but I never
had a course in it. As a matter of fact, it is not

Stewart: a field, in which courses are generally given. I

think, however, you will find that many professors
have thus worked up fields for themselves.

Aside from not having been very much influenced
by formal disciplines, I have also been a lonely
scholar, and have not been greatly Influenced by
people with whom I have associated. I have never
gone to meetings very much. I didn't feel the need
of it, though I would probably have enjoyed going if
things had worked out more in that way. Self-reliance
to that degree is good on the whole, I believe. But
it may be an eccentricity of scholarship, and may
lead to bad mistakes here and there.

(One thing I've said about this bookbinding
interest of mine is, "I'm going to take a course and
get this started right." Then the course was so bad,
I really didn't learn much from it. But I get some
thing out of Harry Roberts [bookmender] over at
Bancroft. )

Riess: Where did you learn your research techniques?

Stewart: I must have picked them up myself, and I've always
felt rather weak in one department; I never have
mastered the question of getting bibliographies
together properly. I'm sure there must be some point
when I should have learned to do that better than I
do. Maybe there isn't. I don't know. Maybe it's
a thing nobody can do, altogether; the very fact that
you're trying to find it means that you have to go
at it hit or miss, and you find what comes along.

Graduate study was not very well organized in
my day really.

Riess: You're talking about the year at Berkeley?

Stewart: Yes, and Columbia. Now, for instance, they always
have a course on bibliography, on getting material
together.

I was saved on this American Place Names book by
the bibliography that a couple of librarians got out.*

*R. B. Sealock, and. P. A. Seely, Bibliography of Place
Names Literature. Chicago, 194-8.

Stewart: They were actually Inspired by my Names on the Land

to do the work I Their volume was absolutely essential
to me. I never would have even tried the Job If I
hadn't had that bibliography. That gave me a check
that I was not missing anything of great importance,
at least.

Riess: You speak in There Was Light of the Influence of
Herbert Bolt on.* That was your first feeling for
Western history?

Stewart: Yes, it was. Very definitely.

Riess: But then you went back to Columbia and did the metrics
thing. Why didn't you stay here? They were not
giving a Ph.D. yet?

Stewart: They were giving a Ph.D. but they'd only given two or
three I suppose, and the department was rather badly
organized. Gayley was Just retiring. They didn't
have really good work on the graduate level at that
time.

Riess: Why did you come here for the master's, actually?

Stewart: Well, partly I wanted to make the contacts here,

because I had lived in California, and I liked the
idea of being in California and I figured one way to
make contacts was to come here for this year.
(Actually it worked out very well. I've been here
ever since — the wisdom of the serpent.) And it was
a good enough place to do master's work in. I had
thought it was better than it was when I came here.
Actually it was not a very good place, but it worked
out all right for that.

Riess: Did you have the work on R. L. Stevenson in mind when
you came here?

Stewart: No, I didn't. I developed that after I came here.
It was a very good idea too. It worked out very
well. I told about that in that little chapter
you're speaking of.

*There Was Light. Autobiography of a University,
Berkeley; 1968, edited by Irving Stone,
Doubleday, 1970, p.

Stewart: What might have been done and what could have
been done — I thought about it vaguely — was carrying
that on for a Ph.D. thesis, and doing the whole
contact of Stevenson with the United States, which
might have been all right. I started to work at
Columbia with Carl Van Doren. I wanted to get into
American literature. I had made up my mind on that
too, although I had a very bad background in it
because Princeton didn't teach any American literature,
So I started in to work on it with Carl Van Doren
and he started me working on what really was the
study of reputations of American writers in England.
And I did that study on Whitman, which I published,
a little essay.

I got discouraged on that really because, I
think, as I look upon it now, he didn't handle me
right. He threw me into it, and the thing looked too
big to me. I realize now it could have been cut down.
That's what a professor should have done. He should
have said, "Look here, you can't do all that. You've
got to cut this down, and get a definite limitation."
As a matter of fact, after I decided to quit it, and
take up something else, he told me that, but he made
his mistake by not handling me that way beforehand.
If I'd done, say, three people, that would have been
plenty I think. I could, have done Whitman, and
Emerson and Thoreau, or something like that. That
would have been plenty. In fact now, the way they do
theses, they probably would have done half of Whitman.
The scale of theses is getting more and more minute.

But that's the time when I quit that and went
into the metrics. I thought I had a good idea to
work on, and it was something I could encompass. I
did an awful lot of work, but I got through it in
pretty fast time. Much to everybody's surprise, I
think, in the graduate school there.

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:

Were you working with somebody on that?

Well, I was working with Professor [Ashley Horace]
Thorndyke, but not really. I mean he wasn't doing
much. He Just let me stew around, but I came out
all right.

Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau.
three?

Did you like those

Stewart: Not particularly. I Just mentioned those as examples.

Riess: I had a feeling from something I read that you have
no use for Thoreau.

Stewart: Well, I don't know what you read — you say something
I wrote?

Riess: Probably it was one of those times when I assumed that
the hero was speaking for you.*

Stewart: Yes. Well, I don't know. I am pretty ambiguous about
Thoreau, particularly when they start crying him up
as the great prophet of democracy. Thoreau is not a
democrat — Thoreau' s an anarchist, and I think — I don't
go for Thoreau too much. Or Emerson either, as far
as that's concerned. I took Emerson's primary advice,
that is, "Be self-reliant." Having said that, I
didn't need any more Emerson, [laughter]

No, I mentioned those three Just because they
would be good examples of that particular thing. You
see, Whitman and Thoreau were more appreciated in
England for a long time than they were in the United
States. Perhaps not Emerson. But they would be
examples. Melville would have been a good example,
of course.

But for my Ph.D. thesis I ran through practically
all English poetry from 1700 down to 1900* and put
that together! Of course I looked upon the Ph.D. as
a thing you ought to get into and get over with, and
I think that's the right attitude toward a Ph.D. So
many of these people go at it as if the Ph.D. thesis
were going to be their great work in life. Often
that's what it amounts to, with people working for
years and years, and they grow old before they even
get their Ph.D. Once you get your Ph.D., you're a
great deal freer to do what you want to do than you
were before. So I looked upon it as something which
should be kept within scope, so it could get finished
up, and then you can do things without the supervision
of somebody else.

Riess: Your dissertation, fl[od,ern Metrical Technique, was
then privately published in 1922.

*See Sheep Rock.

Stewart: Well, that was a crazy business. It was the rule at
Columbia at that time. We had to publish It — a very
bad rule. I think It stemmed back to the old German
system, and of course in the German system publication
was pretty cheap, and they were very small theses,
generally, so the expense was probably not too much.
But the American theses tended to run a lot longer,
so the expense of publication became a serious matter.
I beat that game, as It happened, because I had this
disability from the Army, and there was a kind of G.I.
bill at that time — it didn't amount to very much — but
they would pay tuition and that kind of thing. I put
it up to them, and said, MIfve got to publish this to
get my degree." [laughing] I had a good case and
they published it! They did an awful Job of it,
though. They Just took my manuscript and printed it,
and I never even saw a proof on the thing, so it was
really a shame. If they put all that money into
doing it, they should have done it with care. I was
ashamed to show it to anybody, it was so full of
typographical errors.

Riess: Is The Technique of English Verse (Holt & Co., 1930),
based on your dissertation?

Stewart: No, it's considerably different. Different approach.
The dissertation was really historical.

Rless: I see.

Did you have a commitment from Berkeley to come
back and teach?

Stewart: No. I went to Columbia, and I hardly heard from

Berkeley for a couple of years, and then after I'd
accepted that position at Michigan, they made me an
offer, which I didn't feel I could accept under the
circumstances. So I went to Michigan for a year,
and then they made me an offer again; so I took it
that time.

Riess: Then you returned to Berkeley in 1923 to teach.

Stewart: I had a — really I had a pretty frustrating time for
a good many years in Berkeley. It didn't work out
too well. I got stalled in the assistant professor
rank for a long time. I was in the shade of a lot
of people.

Riess: Was It the field that you were in? You mean, in the
shade in terms of teaching?

Stewart: Yes, other people senior to me in the same field,
and I guess I Just wasn't too good in those days.
I got better, then.

Riess: Did anybody ever pop in and listen to you lecture and
give you pointers? Was there any sort of follow-up
on teaching?

Stewart: Almost none.

Riess: Was it kind of painful for you to teach?

Stewart: Oh, teaching was never painful to me. I wasn't the
kind of person that was worried too much about that.
There are people of course who never get comfortable
before a class. No, that didn't bother me too much,
but I wanted to get into American literature and I
did eventually, but it was a long time before I really
got a chance. And that's when I got into teaching
Chaucer and Middle English, which I really had no
business doing at all. But I enjoyed that, and I got
a lot out of it. I think I did some good teaching
in that too.

I experimented with various fields, which I
think is all right. I like to teach different things.
I taught Shakespeare for a little while. I never
took very well to teaching Shakespeare though,
probably because I didn't like the way the course
was organized. It was not a course in which I was
free. It was a course which was organized for
departmental ends, and I had to fit into a certain
pattern. I didn't go on very far with that. The
Chaucer course I organized on my own, and then I took
on that Middle English course, which I taught for
a good many years.

Riess: Did you get into cross-departmental things in those

early years? I think of your interest, for Instance,
in geology and biology. Did you make a broad thing
out of your courses?

Stewart: No, I don't think so particularly. I believe in
sticking to your last on that kind of a course.

Riess: You seem like such an interdisciplinary person.

Stewart: Yes. I don't think I did much on those lines. Of
course you always have to get into some historical
background. I always enjoyed that. I'm an example
to some extent of the uses of adversity in all that
time, because the very fact that I wasn't working
well in any particular line, I was Just hanging on,
I wasn't particularly successful, I was looking
around for other things to do, that's when I got
the good idea about Ordeal by Hunger, which was
really kind of a key book with me.* (Well, I guess
the Bret Harte book was too.**) That showed me I
could really turn out a book. And then, with the
idea about the Dormer Party, I got away, strictly
speaking, from the departmental field, and got
confidence to go ahead along that line.

But I wouldn't ever have done that if things
had been going along well for me, probably, in other
ways.

Riess: Are you saying, "Thank goodness, I didn't take so

well to teaching." Or is it not really important to
you that you were almost forced into doing the
writing?

Stewart: Well, I think I probably had a more interesting life
the way it worked out than I would the other way.
But I don't know. For instance, well, say I'd gone
ahead more rapidly, promo tions^in the department.
Say I had been somebody's protege, somebody shoved
me ahead, the way it often happens in any kind of
work. Say I'd got to be instructor of graduate
students, directing theses, that sort of thing. It's
a very fine life. Actually I envy a man who has a
lot of old Ph.D. students around. It's wonderful.
A man like Joel Hildebrand, for instance. I have
only four that I've directed. If things had gone
along in that line, I would have been doing some
writing, of course, some research work, I always
would, no matter what I was doing, I would have done
that. That would have been a very good life too.
As it was, I was still an assistant professor when I

*0rdeal by Hunger, the Story of the Dormer Party.
Holt & Co., New York, 1936.

**Bret Harte. Argonaut and Exile, Houghton Mifflin &
Co., New York, 1931.

Stewart: published the Bret Harte book. I didn't get my

promotion after that either, though I really had it
coming to me.

In a sense I'd got to feeling, well, I've done
enough work up there to get my promotion, but they
won't promote me, so what's the use of doing a lot
more just to get my associate professorship? The
Donner Rarty had always appealed to me as a great
story which ought to be written. So I pretty
consciously said, "What have I got to lose? I might
as well risk something and do this." I had a
wonderful time doing it. And the book is still going
along, very nicely.

Riess: This was in the Montgomery department that you were
stagnating?

Stewart: Oh, well, before that too, even when Durham was

chairman. Then it got worse. I did get my promotion
to associate professor in there somewhere, but it was
awfully slow.

Riess: So you really have to believe in the power of

departmental politics and selling yourself and all
that kind of thing.

Stewart: Well, that's the sort of thing I never was very good
at.

Riess: It amazes me that you can at this point say that one
life would have been as good and as rewarding as
another. As I read your English department history,
I felt your sense of how Walter Morris Hart was a
tragic figure, and yet he had obviously had all of
the things that you are describing as being desirable,
the graduate students, and the contacts — .*

Stewart: No, he didn't have too much. Not really. He was in
the position of being frustrated. You see, he never
really came back after he was in the administrative
work. He never caught up with what had happened in
the meantime.

*The Department of English of the University of
California on the Berkeley Campus, by George R.
Stewart, University of California, 1968, p. 2*4-.

Rless:

Stewart :

Bless:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

Then you are describing the dangers of the too rapid
assent?

I don't think rapid assent is all bad. When a man
has the stuff, I think that's when you should push
him as hard as you can. Maybe I shouldn't have been
pushed; that may be all right. I'm not complaining
of that particularly. But I think either being
pushed too fast or held back too much is likely to
be bad for a man.

They've got men in the department now who have
made full professor, oh, at not much over thirty.
I think there's a question of whether that's a good
thing for them or not. Maybe it will be, I wouldn't
be surprised. I talked to one of them the other day,
and said, "Now you've done everything at thirty-two,
what are you going to spend the rest of your life

That shocked him a little. It's a problem,
Is he going to keep on going through

doing?11

Just the same.

the same old round of stuff, turning out Ph.D.
candidates? That's a long time from thirty- two to
sixty-seven.

Because why? Why isn't it Just like a Job? Lots of
people do repetitive Jobs.

Well, of course, that's what would never satisfy me.
I don't think it will satisfy this man either,
probably. I don't think that's what a professor
should be.

It sounds risky to attain goals too early.

I think it is. I've known people around universities
that would seem to illustrate that, people who I
think were pushed too fast in the sense of never
having to work for what they got, or didn't go on
beyond a certain point. Of course you have this
whole problem about aging. There are brilliant under
graduates who never got anywhere beyond that, and
brilliant graduate students who never amount to
anything afterwards. And I think you have brilliant
young professors — I think it's a kind of aging
process, often. They reach a certain stage, and
they don't develop beyond that.

What I was thinking about was when I was in
college, once with some friends we laid down our

J f.

Stewart ;

ambitions in life [laughing], the way people will
at that time. I had the usual things, about having
a good Job and a nice family and so forth, the usual
bourgeois ambitions. And then I remember something
that I've often thought of since, that I wanted to
have some kind of work that was expanding, so I'd
always be pushed harder, always have the sense of
being pushed harder to do the next thing. I really
kept that up. I really had that kind of life. And
I've always felt a sense of, "This next book is going
to be the best book I've ever done. It's going to
be something different from the last one." I've
always managed to keep that up quite well. I haven't
lost it altogether yet. Of course that's one of the
great problems with aging. You get to the point
where you can't quite do it. But this book I'm

working on now is plenty tough!
going to be plenty big too.

[laughing] It's

(I was sitting here two nights ago and the
telephone rang. It was the Metropolitan Museum in
New York. Some girl was surely working overtime,
because it was about nine or ten o'clock back there.
They wanted to use two pictures out of my U.S. *fO.»
That's nice, you know. Called up the next morning,
and they wanted to use two more. So there is the
sense of still going to expand, to go on a little
bit more. That's very important to me. You were
speaking about doing a routine job — I couldn't —
Oh, I suppose I could do it, after all, I'd adapt
enough so that I could do it, but that wouldn't ever
be what I would think of doing. )

Riess: You said the Bret Harte book was a key book for you.

Stewart: Yes, it was, and I wrote most of that book in Prance.
You see, I had a sabbatical year (June 1930-1931),
and I squeezed it out some way or other so that I
was able to take the family to Europe. I got a little
break, and got some money from this Army disability.
They made a kind of payment, and that was enough. I
was terribly hard up.

Riess: How did you get the materials to work on it in Prance?

Stewart: I took them along. I'd done all the work and had my
notes. I had worked in the Huntington Library quite
a bit on that. There's quite a bit of material there.
Oh, I worked around a great deal in a small way. I

*George R. Stewart, U.S. *K). Houghton Mifflin, 1953-

'IS*

• •'• . f.

Stewart: was up at the American Antiquarian Society, and I

went out to Springfield, Massachusetts. They had a
file at the Springfield Republican that I had to
use. Things were harder to get at in those days.
Now there's so much reproduction, you don't have to
move around necessarily.

Riess: Sounds like that would be expensive too, to do your
own research and have to get yourself places.

Stewart: Well, of course, I did that on the way to Europe.
Riess: Did you have a publisher?

Stewart: Well, I had a kind of contract with Houghton-Mifflin.
No commitment, no advance. One of their men was over
in France Just about the time I was coming home. I
had the book all done, and he read it, and they gave
me a contract then. So I didn't actually wait around,
although they pretty near failed then. It was when
the depression was Just hitting. They wanted to put
off publication, but I insisted on getting it published,
After all, it was worth a lot to me Just to publish it,
whether it sold or not. It didn't sell. It was
terrible at that time. But at least I got it on my
record.

Riess: Did you think that this would be the thing that would
Jump you up to an associate professorship?

Stewart: Well, it should have been, certainly. I already had
the metrics book out, and several articles, scholarly
articles. I had plenty of work as far as the — well,
a lot more work than most people who are promoted to
associate professor.

Riess: I have a copy of a letter here that was written in

1935 [April 15, 1935], recommending you for promotion
signed by A.G. Brodeur, J. Lowenberg, J.H. Hildebrand,
S.G. Morley, J.S.P. Tatlock, M.C. Flaherty; and
C. Pasohall is the chairman.

Stewart: I never saw that letter.
Riess: It's very impressive.

Stewart: Well, those letters have got to be impressive. That
was a faculty review committee, you know. Does it

Stewart: say I was recommended by the department?

Bless: Yes. It says, "His teaching, while seemingly not

distinguished, is regarded as sound and satisfactory.
He has assisted in administrative work conscientiously
and well, where it has been asked of him, both in
the department and in the University at large. He
is esteemed and liked by those who know him best,
and it is felt that he is a man who will continue to
grow in intellectual and scholarly usefulness.

"It is the unanimous recommendation of the
committee that Professor Stewart be promoted to an
associate professorship. We feel that promotion in
this case has been unduly delayed, and that it should
take precedence over any other case in the Department
of English."

Stewart: Well, that's handsome I I knew some of those people
were involved in my promotion — of course I wasn't
promoted at that time. Let's see. Or was I? Yes,
I guess I was.

Morley was a very good friend of mine. I knew
he supported me. He told me he was on two of my
committees. This must have been at least the second
time I was up before a committee. Hildebrand's a man
whom I see frequently now. I think that's probably
the first time he ever focussed on me. I don't think
he knew who I was before that time. And of course
Tatlock had a lot of respect for me and my work. I
think Brodeur probably did too. I see Brodeur
occasionally now.* And the rest of those men I think
would have been favorably enough disposed toward me.
At least I don't think I had any enemies in that group.
Who were they again, now?

Riess: Well, you mentioned them all except for this name
that I don't know, Paschall.

Stewart: Yes, he was in the German department. I knew him
slightly. I think he was friendly enough to me.

Riess: And Martin Flaherty.

*Arthur G. Brodeur may actually have died before this
time, but G.R.S. had not heard of it.

Stewart: He was in Speech. I don't know about him.

(As I have stated this, it sounds as if I had
been up for membership in a club or something. But
when I put it that a man was friendly to me, I mean
that it should be taken in a professional sense, that
is, well-disposed toward my work in the University
and my publication-record.)

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

me?

Did you come across a letter Gayley wrote for

No. Was that also a letter for promotion?

No. That was when I had finished my graduate work
out here and got my master's degree. He wrote me
sort of a general letter I could use for applying
for a job. Of course, they are always laudatory,
but Gayley wrote a particularly nice one. I gave
that to Jim Kantor a year or so ago, for the
University archives.

Oh, I figured my promotion would come along
sometime. Eventually I had what they call "moral
tenure." I had been around so long that I couldn't
very easily be got rid of; so I figured it would come
sometime. I did think that it wasn't going to hurt
me to try something else.

It was important to you to be teaching and be connected
with a university, I take it, because otherwise, why
not just be a writer?

Writing is too financially precarious, for one thing.
You get yourself in an awful trap. Of course writing
about Bret Harte was a good thing for me, as a matter
of fact, [laughing] It showed me what a trap writing
can be. He was a prime example of a man who should
never have cut loose. He should have taken that job
at the University of California when he had the chance.
That would have changed his whole life. He probably
would have written much better, and had a much better
life all the way around.

No, writing is — for a man who writes as I do —
writing is a good servant, but a poor master. I never
have had the real touch or facility of writing things
that people buy in large quantities. I've had some
books that have sold pretty well, but not many. But

Stewart:
Bless:

Stewart:

Bless:
Stewart:

Bless:

Stewart:
Bless:

I did go on half time at the University, for about
ten years.

Benjamin Lehman said he didn't know how you could
have kept going here under the Montgomery atmosphere.
What did he mean?

He has a very deep mind, Ben Lehman. I'd hate to
try — I've got enough trying to get out my own ideas
here, without doing anything on him.

You will see now more perhaps why I said in my
Autobiography that I didn't think I'd had good luck
when it came to my professional career. I've had
bad breaks on that.

But some of them turned out well.

That's because I turned them around that way. I
think the thing about Ben Lehman — I can tell you an
anecdote.. .

I was walking in Wheeler Hall with him one day
when he was chairman, and he was talking about some
body who I think was on the Junior staff — you know,
Ben was always interested in all his people. He said,
"You know, of course, he is talented, but very
neurotic," and I said, "I get tired of so many of
these neurotic people around here." He said, "Oh,
you're Just as neurotic as any of them I " I said,
"Yes, but I make my neuroses work for me." I think
that's a quite profound statement. I've been able to
chain them and direct them. I am probably as neurotic
as the next man, but I channel it.

I'm very curious what reactions you got from
Ben. Anything more you want to tell me? [laughing]

He said, "George Stewart built up the department a
great deal In the flat years of Montgomery." What
did he mean by that?

I suppose by the writing I did.
else much.

I think not anything

And he said it was amazing that you could keep going
in the Montgomery atmosphere. In his interview he

•

Rless: talked a lot about Montgomery.*

Stewart: He probably knew a lot more about it than I did, as
a matter of fact. He was in a better position to
know. He was a full professor at that time. Of
course he was one of the ones whom I criticized in
my department book because they didn't do more about
it.

Ben withdrew considerably at that time. He
really stopped writing in there entirely. His great
contribution to the University was as department
chairman, and as a presidential adviser.

Bless: You wrote an amazing number of articles too. When

you have an idea do you Just like to work it through
on paper?

Stewart: A few of them were compulsive. I get to thinking
about something and I think about it for years, and
finally I have to do it. Others were Just things of
opportunity. Each was something that was nice to
work at, and it might help with promotion if you
were going to be promoted at all. Then of course
when I got to writing the books I didn't do so much
in the way of articles, except I got into that work
in Names . and they needed articles. I did some because
it was good for the journal. And I did others that
way too.

The articles sprang from all sorts of motivations.
There are not nearly as many as many people have
written, because I did so much in the way of books,
too. I think they're more remarkable for the range
of interest they show. Also certain themes keep
coming out from a long way back, like the one I did
on the stream forks in the Sierra Nevada, which was
an early place-name study, which comes a long time
before Names on the Land.

You see — anything I got an interest in, say from
teaching, I tended to see in it something that could
be written. There's even an article on Shakespeare
in there, you know, a little note on Shakespeare, and

*Benjamin H. Lehman, Recollections and Reminiscences
of Life in the Bay Area from 1920 Onward. Regional
Oral History Office, Berkeley, 1969.

Stewart: one on Malory. And Chaucer of course too. I once
figured out — somebody asked me about this, and I
figured out I had published something on every
century of English literature from the l^th on down.

Riess: When you were working on the articles, would you

discuss them? Would you work through the ideas by
talking to somebody?

Stewart: Oh yes. I often talked to people about them. I
don't find that that usually amounts to so much.
People don't usually have any very great contribution
to make, because they don't know enough about the
subject. You're talking to them about something on
which you know a great deal, and they only have a
general idea. Oh yes, I've talked to lots of people
about all sorts of things. I don't remember getting
too much out of it that way, except with Storm and
Fire.

Riess: I was thinking also of the sort of competitive sense-
like scientists when they come on to some discovery
will quickly write it up. I wondered if that goes
on in an English department, or in a humanities
department?

Stewart: I don't think it does, no. I don't know how much it
goes on in science actually. Of course you hear
about it. It's the folklore of science, about these
things always being discovered at the same time, and
somebody rushing into print. I don't know actually
how often that happens. At least in my time in
English studies, I don't remember any time that I
got involved in that. I can't think of anything.

It sometimes happens, of course. Now — oh, it
didn't really happen in this case but Jim Hart was
much perturbed because this man in Iowa brought out
a study of the popular literature in the United
States Just at the time Jim was about finished with
his Popular Book.* But actually the two things

*James David Hart, The Popular Book, A History of
America's Literary Taste, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1950.

•

Stewart: didn't coincide too much. I don't know quite why

that is, but you don't find too many examples of it
happening. At least you didn't. I think it may now,
because there are so many more people working on
things. There's Just that much more chance for some
kind of coincidence.

Riess: The number of ideas you took up, it seemed as if

you were hounded by the intellectual dogs, or some
thing like that.

Stewart: Oh, I think I was, in a sense. Yes. I had a certain
amount of compulsion I suppose. That article on
Melville, for Instance, is one of the best things I
ever did. I had that in my mind for about ten years.
I kept thinking about this and that. I tried to get
some other person to write it. I didn't want to
write it I [laughing] They'd talk to me and say,
"That's certainly a good idea, yes. Why don't you
write it?" But I never did it, never got around to
it. Finally I got that graduate course in which the
whole idea was that I was going to make the students
work on one particular project for half the course.
That worked out very well, that course. It resulted
in several publications.

The first year, I threw this Melville idea into
the pot, and I got something out of the students. Of
course it was still my article all right, and I
finally published it after all those years.

Riess: I guess that would have been one of the great things
that graduate students could do.

Stewart: Well, there's a certain amount of criticism on that,
about professors exploiting their students. But I
think that's a lot of hooey really, in most instances.
In science particularly. I think if a graduate
student publishes something along with the professor,
that's fine for him. That gives him the gratification,
and starts him off. I know I've had reports back
occasionally from students who were in that course.
They're very proud of this, you know. I mentioned all
of them in the footnote. They think this is wonderful.

I did one article in collaboration with a student
(Joseph E. Backus) out of that course. That was very
Interesting and it worked out well. It makes a nice

•

Stewart: bond. He's the only person I ever collaborated with
on that kind of thing. I see him occasionally.
He's teaching at the University of Hawaii now. A
nice thing to have both of us together on it.

Another student I was working on something with
ran away with the ball, and that was fine. He
(Hungerford) did so much work that I lost track of
what was happening. I said, "I can't sign this.
You've really done the work, so you sign it." There
was a lot of my stuff in it, but he put it under his
own name. I said, "I can't sign this without going
over all that stuff, and I don't want to take the
time . "

Riess: In the notes for Ordeal by Hunger — there does seem
to be somebody working with you and doing a lot of
reading of letters and giving you kind of synopses.

Stewart: It might have been Paul Johnson. He's still hereabouts,
He Just published a book, a pictorial history of
California. It's had a pretty good run, I think. He
worked for Sunset for many years. I see him once in
a while.

Riess: How did you two get together on Ordeal by Hunger?

Stewart: He was on a student help project they had during the

New Deal, a thing for students to make a little money.
He was very good. He worked for me quite a little
bit. I don't remember him on Ordeal by Hunger
particularly, but that was the period.

Riess: How did you get him?

Stewart: Oh, I don't remember exactly, but if you had a topic
they could work on, well, more or less what you were
supposed to do was give these students a chance to
help themselves. I suppose he came in and applied
for a Job, and this was something he could do. Often,
of course, you had them working on things that didn't
amount to too much. The idea was that if they could
make a little bit of money, why, you didn't worry
too much if what they were turning up wasn't of much
Importance. But he was a good man. He has had quite
a distinguished record really, since then.

I had a whole WPA project going there for a
while. It's still all in the library, the stuff they

•

Stewart :

Bless:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

collected.* They had about ten people working on
that.

On what?

I had them collecting reviews on Western "books out
of the Journals. It's still a potentially useful
thing they did. A big file, of every kind of book
that had to do with the West. They would find
reviews on it.

Gosh!

That was thirty years ago. There weren't so many
books. They went through journals in the library,
and collected all the reviews that had to do with
Western books. It was fine. It's something they
ought to be doing these days, you know, with the do-
nothing administration we have now. Back in the New
Deal they really made Jobs for workers. That's what
they should be doing right now.

I had a man running the thing, a graduate student
of history whom I'd known. He was down and out too.
It was one of the best Jobs he'd held in a long time.
Then there were about ten people who were all down
and out. They had some education. They could read
and write, that was about all. They weren't what
you'd call research assistants. They could do this
kind of thing. They made some mistakes of course.
They'd get books In that weren't really — didn't
really deal with the West, they Just thought they
did. That doesn't do any harm.

Then did you have to check it all, or did you have
to pass on the whole thing?

No, I didn't have to. This graduate student was a
kind of director of it. He'd throw some of the stuff
out that obviously shouldn't be there. I, at that
time, had the idea of doing kind of a big history of
Western literature. I gave it up after I got to
writing novels, so I never even used this. It would
have been very useful. I gave it to the library,

* Filed under George Stewart, author, in The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Stewart: and It may have been used a good many times. I

don't know how much it's known about. It never was
put in shape really, but it's there.

Riess: How were the depression years for you?

Stewart: The depression years were not particularly hard for
us, because the prices were very much lower. We
were Just as hard up in the twenties as we were
during the depression! In fact I was very hard up
always until Storm hit the Jackpot there, with the
Book of the Month Club. That really put me over the
hump financially.

Riess: Was your wife working?

Stewart: She worked a little. Not very much. She gradually
got her training, and she went into social work, you
know.. But when the children were small she couldn't
do much. In her middle thirties she started taking
graduate work in social welfare. It was pretty slow.
She couldn't get much of it in at a time. Eventually
she got her master's in social work, and she worked
for a good many years.

Riess: Where did you first live when you came here from
Michigan and you were married?

Stewart: We lived in a tiny place up on Canyon Road, right up
above the stadium. We lived there for only a year,
though, because we were going to have a baby and we
didn't have much room there. So we moved into a
little apartment in an old building on La Loma. We
were there for a year, and we moved to another place
down on Hilgard for a year. Then, Mrs. Stewart's
mother had an idea — she was a widow then — she wanted
to come live in Berkeley and get a house that had
an apartment underneath where she could live. So
she bought a house on Hill Court and we lived there
for three years.

•

Stewart: In those years we moved a lot. We came back
from Europe and went up to the top of Virginia
Street and lived In two different houses up there
about a year apiece. We always had some good reason
for moving. By that time the children were getting
to be four and six. This was the very depths of the
depression, and we bought a house out on San Luis
Road in 193^ for $3^00. It was a terrible place.
We borrowed all the money we could get together,
mortgaged the house, and got a veteran's loan. I
think we raised about $4000 more and remodeled the
house, and made quite a nice Job of it.

We lived there for sixteen years. That was
really a very lucky house. The children grew up
there and I became a writer and full professor and
everything else. Then we sold that house, and built
the house up on Cordon! ces Road where we lived until
we came over here. We lived nineteen years in that
house. That's our history of houses. That house
on San Luis always pleases me, because I can still
go out there and see the pine trees I planted, which
are up over the top of the house. And there is lots
of stuff there that I still can see I did.

In a way the most discouraging years were the
first two years we were on San Luis Road, because
that was the depression and that was the time of
the Montgomery department, and not getting anywhere
in the department, and all that. But from 19 36, with
Ordeal by Hunger and my promotion, things moved.

Riess: In the beginning, when you had children and the

children were young, did you have a sort of "take it
or leave it" feeling? or was everything really tied
up with this University for you?

Stewart: No, I wasn't committed to this University particularly,
but of course it was the only Job I had. [laughing]
So I was tied up in that way. I don't know. I was
in a fairly confused state during those years when
my children were little, but I think it's a very
trying time in many ways. It's a completely new
experience. It's a rather difficult thing. You
probably know all about that I And of course at that
stage it looks like forever, but actually it's a
very short period, if you have a moderate number of
children. They grow up so fast that somehow it isn't

'fO

Stewart: your whole life after all, but it seems that way at
the time. In the old days, if you had ten children,
it was your whole life then!

Riess: For you, how do you measure the success of your
books, or a book?

Stewart: You measure it by the quality and the number of your
readers I think, more than anything else. That of
course is reflected in the sales also, at least the
quantity is. Not by the reviews as much as a lot of
people would think. I got cynical about reviews.
Most of them are hurriedly done, and rather stupid
things. I don't really pay much attention to reviews
anymore. I think what I appreciate most is a really
good appreciation and even criticism of the book by
somebody for whom I have considerable respect.

Riess: Not a reviewer?

Stewart: Well, he might be a reviewer, yes. There are good

reviewers too. Of course anybody's likely to review
a book. Out of a lot of reviews you'll get some
very good ones and some that you are very pleased
with. There were a tremendous number of reviews of
the American Place Names book. They must have Just
showered review copies out everywhere. Some of them
are really very fine, very appreciative.

Riess: Do you have any control over who the review copies
go to?

Stewart: Almost none. I don't try to do that. Of course

sometimes the publisher will ask you for some advice,
but not generally. I can't remember more than one
or two times when I ever really tried to get a
reviewer spotted for a book.

I think the quality of reviewing has deteriorated
in my time as a writer. Maybe my point of view has
changed, but I think the quality of reviewing, both

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart;

Rless:
Stewart :

quantitatively and qualitatively, has declined.
There are not as many reviews ordinarily.

And the book publishing companies have got
awfully big, you know. There's very little personal
touch, I should judge. Of course I can't go entirely
by my own experience.

There's almost no good editing done. There were
the famous old editors, like Maxwell Perkins, and
like — well, Saxe Commins, whom I worked with some,
though he never did so much for me. But he was a
very fine editor, and he had a sense of warm,
personal contact which means a good deal.

Looking at your fan mail in Bancroft Library, I had
the feeling that your books really spoke to your
readers. Did those letters peter out as the years
went by?

Certainly for me, but that wouldn't mean anything,
as I haven't been writing as popular books. So
I wouldn't say that that means much generally. I
don't know how other authors would feel about that,
whether the readers write very much to them. I think
it's an important link, really.

I remember I talked with a psychologist, a UCLA
man, once, who was Interested in that more or less.
He called it feedback. He said it was a very
important source of feedback to a writer, because
a writer is likely to get the feeling that he's
writing in a vacuum, and these things helped me
much.

Or that he is writing for reviewers.

Or that he is Just writing for money. At least that
would be one kind of feedback. Money is a kind of
feedback, [laughing] I mean, you know that something
is happening anyway if you have a big sale. But
it's also important to have the other thing.

The phenomenon of fan mail is something that I
think has never been studied very much. Do you know
anything on that, for instance?

Rless:

No. I Just read yours.
into these letters.

People put so much feeling

•

Stewart: Tremendous at times. Yes. I think the phenomenon
of fan mail ought to be studied, because I think
it's an important phase of literary history. I'm
not speaking Just of what you get from writing
books. What kind of books, for instance, inspire
fan mail? Because obviously a controversial book
will bring out more of it than anything else. I've
got the most letters of any book on Man, largely
because it irritated a lot of religious people, and
they wrote letters.

A book which is controversial will bring out
more, and I think also it's probably proportional to
the number of copies circulated. The more circulated,
why, the more letters you get back I suppose. Did
you get that impression in particular books that you
read?

Riess: Well, I've only got up really through the fan mail

on Storm. I think often It wasn't so much a response
to a particular book, but it was the kind of person
who wrote a letter, and for them it was really a very
meaningful experience, period.

Stewart: Yes, I think it means a good deal, because the

ordinary person doesn't break down to write a letter
very easily. For every one that writes a letter
there must be a dozen who say, "Well, I think I'll
write a letter," but who don't get around to it.

Riess: Maybe the average person who writes a letter wants
to communicate in a give-and-take way. Yet, when
you write to an author you don't expect that. So
it's a special kind of letter.

Stewart: I think that most people have the hope that they'll
hear from the author. They usually give their
return address, I notice. I've acknowledged
practically all of my letters. I don't write very
much, but I have acknowledged them. Every now and
then I've heard back in some other way how pleased
the person was. So I think it's a nice thing to do.
If you had too many of them you couldn't do it.
Storm had a lot, and I had a girl work for me as
secretary then. I acknowledged a lot of them Just
through her. Occasionally there's one I don't like,
and I won't answer it. [laughter] You know people
try to show off. They aren't really interested in

,-.,

Stewart: the book so much; they're Just interested In them
selves. Those I sometimes don't answer.

Earth Abides was the book that inspired almost
fierce loyalty. I think when you hit those letters
you'll see the difference. I never got very many
adverse letters, but I think that's natural because
if people don't like a book they're not apt to write
a letter about it. They'll probably be bored by it,
and the last thing they'll want to do is write a
letter. So, I don't think the fact that nearly all
the letters are complimentary means too much. Unless,
as I say, you've got a controversial subject, and so
they get mad about something.

Riess: It does Indicate that they were somehow the old days
of the book, when a book wasn't Just picked up and
put down between television programs.

Stewart: It meant more to people on the whole, I think, yes.
I haven't got very many letters, not nearly as many
as I expected on this Place Names book, because that's
the kind of book that rather tends to inspire letters.
They send in for more information, and that kind of
thing. But I didn't get as many out of that as I
expected.

Riess: I noticed a lot of that from Names on the Land.
Stewart: Yes. That was pretty heavy.

Riess: Did you put in a request at the end of that book that
if people knew anything—

Stewart: I did in one of the later printings. I don't think
I did in the first printing. That's a dangerous
thing to do. You can't tell what you're going to
get. You more or less obligate yourself to answer,
if you do that.

Riess: I was wondering how well protected against reactions,
adverse or otherwise, you were after a book hit the
bookstores. Did you tend to immerse yourself in the
next book, or did you wait around for the public
response?

Stewart: By the time a book came out I was usually well along
in the next one. There's a considerable time lag in

Stewart: there. Unless you want to sit around for about a year,
there's no use waiting till the book comes out. Some
people do, of course. People have all sorts of
different habits, but I was always hot on the trail
of the next book. I'd be well along. I rather lost
interest in the book by the time it was published,
half the time.

Rless: I wondered whether you would lose interest; not only
that, but whether it was really somehow part of your
past already, so that you weren't even involved
somehow.

Stewart: Well, I wouldn't put It as strong as that. You're

interested In the book still, but you're moving ahead
to the next book. At least I always was. That could
be checked out very easily by — well, by the data
(diary of events) you have there, for instance, you
could tell when the book was published, and how far
along I was in the next book by that time.

When I finished East of the Giants, when I was
down In Mexico that spring, I didn't have much else
to do down there, I was living a very quiet, pleasant
life. So I started Doctor's Oral right away. I had
about a third of it written before I left Mexico that
spring. But that was a very short book.

Rless: And then even down there you had the idea for Storm «
I gather.

Stewart: Yes, I did, although I was still holding it as

something for the not too immediate future. Then I
finished Doctor's Oral. Then I was playing around
with an idea of another book on the West, and a novel.
I got to thinking more about Storm. I was going to
write this Western book first and then write Storm.
and the Western book didn't seem too interesting to
me, so I thought why not Just drop it completely
and go ahead with this idea on Storm. So that's the
way I did that. I had a slight gap in there, but not
much.

Hi ess: At this point were you in contact with Holt, or
whoever your publishers were, so that they were
pushing for work from you?

Stewart: Well, you see, Holt had a difficult time Just about
then. They, I think, got into financial trouble and

Riess:
Stewart :

Stewart: had administrative troubles. Anyway, thatfs when I
shifted to Random House. Holt did get a reorganiza
tion and they tried very hard to get me to give them
Doctor's Oral but I had agents then, and they didn't
want to deal with Holt because Holt was in too
uncertain a position. So I went over to Random House.

How did you get hooked up with your agent?

I think it was through Joe Jackson, Joseph Henry
Jackson. He was a very close friend of John
Steinbeck's. These people were John Steinbeck's
agents. I knew John too. It was through that general
connection that I tied up with Mclntosh and Otis.

Riess: And with Annie Laurie Williams also?

Stewart: She was tied up with them, yes. She split off a long
time ago. They had their offices in the same building.

I had a letter from her just this morning, or
rather from her sister, because she's getting old.
She's finally giving up her office. It's a little
embarrassing to me. I won't probably have much more
work of that kind, but she kept hanging on, you know.
She would do her work from her room in the hotel, that
sort of thing. That's not good, when a person gets
too old.

Riess: You mean it's better for her to Just sever connections
completely?

Stewart: I think when people get that old they should quit,

retire, and make some arrangement for their writers.
Wouldn't you think so? I suppose some people, like
her, Just never feel they're ready to retire.

Riess: Maybe she has some other person in the office who
in fact actually does the things?

Stewart: Well, that's been the way it is, but now she's

giving up the office entirely. As I say, she didn't
even write me this letter this morning. Actually,
they sold an option to Earth Abides and they sent me
a check for that. It didn't amount to much, but it
will be something if they sell it. But I've had
difficulty dealing with her, because she Just wasn't
at the point where she was answering letters very
well.

Riess: She got in her share in the early days.

Stewart: She was a very nice person, a crazy kind of person,
but very warm-hearted. And very efficient in her
day, too. Everybody knew her. She was a figure in
show business in New York.

Riess: Was it with any kind of reluctance that you went big
time with the agents and everything?

Stewart: I don't think you could say I was very big time. I
thought it was a very good idea at the time. I was
very glad to do it. It does make you feel a little
more important to have an agent. I got sick of it
after a while. I gave up the agent after about eight
years.

Riess: I can see why you might have needed one to guide you
through the intricacies of the rights to Storm and
translations.

Stewart: Well, you need an agent for that. That's pretty

technical work. I wouldn't want to get involved with
motion-picture contracts without an agent. In fact
you need one for foreign rights. A. D. Peters in
London handles those. And I've had Annie Laurie to
handle all the subsidiary rights. The actual book
rights I handle myself, ever since — Fire was the
first book I took back, so they handled about four
or five books actually, two of which I have taken
back. I told them I didn't see any point in their
handling these any more. Anything you'd sell would
be very small.

There ought to be a termination contract on agents,
Actually most agents work without any contract at all,
so I suppose you can take the thing away from them.
You can break your relationship any time you want.

Riess: That's harder than breaking a contract, isn't it?

Stewart: Well, not necessarily. As far as the book is con
cerned, they do have a contract on that. It's very
irritating. You see, they've been drawing royalties
on Storm now for 25 years without really doing
anything at all.

3^:r.l

Stewart: Publishers' contracts have a termination clause.

If they don't keep the book In print, you can terminate
the contract. Of course, they won't keep a book In
print unless It's paying pretty well, so you can
usually exercise those clauses if you want to.

Let me tell you a little more about the agent
while I'm at it, that is, my experience of what an
agent can do, and what they can't do. It's never
been particularly gratifying to me. They arranged
my contract with Random House to begin with, and I
kept with Random House for more than fifteen years.
But an agent is a third party, who is a nuisance In
some ways, at least it was in those days. I think it
still is, from what I hear. Instead of negotiating
directly with the publisher — you do to some extent —
yet at the same time the agent is in on it and it
gets to be a nuisance. It's Just another party. And
of course they take their ten percent which they don't
seem to earn very much, to me. And you have to keep
accounts on them too. The accounting I thought they
were very bad at, generally. I couldn't get my agents'
accounts to agree with my publisher's accounts. That
used to irritate me no end. I thought they ought at
least to be able to keep accounts.

Of course, I didn't want agents stirring up
business for me. I'd rather supply my own business.

Hiess: You mean stirring up requests for you to write a book
on a subject?

Stewart: That, or magazine articles.

Riess: That's the role I think of with them, the hard sell.
Working up some business.

Stewart: Well, maybe they didn't do that with me because they
didn't think it was suitable for me, and I wouldn't
do it well, I know. Maybe with other writers they
would do better. But anyway, I just couldn't see what
they were accomplishing. In some ways I'm sorry now,
because as I'm getting older, it looks as if it might
be a good idea to have somebody taking care of all the
details, but my experience was that they didn't take
care of them. I couldn't see why I was having an
agent, half the time.

Riess: It was Just one more person for you to look out for,
practically?

Stewart : Yes .

Riess: There was a time in the correspondence from Annie

Laurie to you where I really felt "agent" in the old
sense of the word, when she described the battle that
she and Bennett Cerf had had selling Storm to
Paramount .

Stewart: Yes. [laughing] I remember that letter.

You recall I spoke about bad luck in my
professional life? Storm was a good example. It
was published Just before Pearl Harbor. We had some
thing like seven motion picture companies interested
in it, about all there are, and then, of course, when
Pearl Harbor came, they all dropped it immediately.
Eventually Paramount came back and picked it up. Of
course they took it very cheaply. You probably saw
the figures there. $20,000. Yes. It would have gone
for a lot more than that with some bidding.

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:

And then was it made as a movie?

It was made as a Walt Disney verson, which is not too
bad. Paramount sold it at some time to Disney
apparently. You see, you lose all your rights when
you make a moving picture sale like that. You're
completely out as far as the motion picture industry
is concerned. I never paid much attention to what
was happening to it.

Oh, I did for a while. They had a lot of activity
for a while, but they didn't get anywhere on it.

What's the Authors' Guild? What did it do for you?

Well, it never did anything for me. I finally quit
it. It never really got to be very strong. I got
tired of it.

What kind of powers does it have?

It doesn't have any powers at all. It's done a little
bit of work on getting standard contracts, things of
that sort.

One file you have a somewhat threatening note to
somebody that you would "let the Authors' Guild know
about it, if they did such and such..."

•

Stewart: Yes. I did that, but it obviously didn't do anything,
That's one reason I didn't like it.

Bless: Was instructing the reader a value that you placed
high in your writing?

Stewart: I don't think so high in my novels, no. Of course In
a nonfiction book — no, I didn't place that very high.
Oh, I suppose it's inevitable, having been so much a
teacher in my time, that I can't get over the idea of
telling people, Instructing people. I suppose that's
natural. But on the whole I didn't look upon those
novels as being instructional.

Riess: Another assumption I made from my reading of your

books is that you think it's important for people to
be in touch with the ancient and uncivilized in our
history.

Stewart: Do I think that? I guess I do, yes. Well, I think
we would have to go into my psyche a lot deeper than
we can right now, to find out about that! [laughter]
I don't know why. I think essentially what appeals
to me is simplicity. I often oversimplify, I think.
I've been accused of that. It's probably true. I
think it ties in with that. The simple, the direct.

On the other side, I have a great sense of what I
sometimes call microcosm, that is, of trying to express
the whole thing in a small way. My books are very
carefully plotted, you notice. They're fairly much
microcosms in themselves. You start with something,
and build up to something, and go to the end. That
was in Storm and Earth Abides, a lot of them. Of
course Earth Abides is a microcosm in two or three
senses. So is Years of the City.

I think the idea of simplicity is the way I would
put it. That is, all my books I think have this —
that's what you were saying, really, the Interest in

Stewart: the primitive in a certain sense. Take even Joe

Grantland in Doctor's Oral. His virtues are really
all in his simplicity. Did you get a chance to read
that? Well, you can see how it is with him there.
He's not brilliant but a very direct and strong person
in his way.

Riess: My strongest memory of Doctor's Oral is your statements
in the beginning and the end.

Stewart: Well, as you know I've always tried to keep a certain
unrealistic touch in my books also. Those passages
I put in I've done in so many of my books. Some kind
of partly lyrical passages. They're very hard to know
how to handle exactly, but I think on the whole they've
been quite successful in most of those books. I tried
that in Doctor's Oral at the beginning and at the end.

Riess: I would have guessed that that was where you said what
you wanted to say, that that was the point.

Stewart: In a sense I suppose so. I think the beginning and
end of Doctor's Oral are two of the best things I
ever wrote. That book is forgotten about, but I like
both those parts very much.

Riess: I would like to ask the obvious about Doctor's Oral.
Who were the people in it, and how was it received
by the department here? And what were your feelings
when you were writing it, about the department?

Stewart: Well, I could talk a lot about that. I tried very
hard not to make any of the characters in the book
seem like the characters around Berkeley, and on
the whole I think I succeeded pretty well on that.
Have you heard any gossip about that?

Riess: I Just read in one letter that somebody thought
Martlness sounded like Ben Lehman.

Stewart: Yes. That was almost inevitable. There may have

been some resemblance — the way Ben was in those days
much more than the way he was later. I think the
man changed a great deal in his development. Some
times of course those so-called identifications of
characters were based on some particular mannerism,
a very small matter. I often had the idea that
these characters were like certain people I knew,
often not at Berkeley. But I tried to disguise them,

•

Stewart: so that I didn't have too much trouble on that. I

had no trouble that I know of at all in the department.
I don't know whether there was any real objection to
it or not. There may have been some I never heard of.
The older man there, Angle, of course many people
thought to be a lot like Jack Tatlook. He was to
some extent. The woman — I didn't really have anybody
in mind particularly. She was rather a type. We had
no women in the department at that time, so I couldn't
be accused of making use of that.

J. MacNair Brice had some mannerisms like
Merritt Hughes, who Just died the other day. He was
in the department, or had been in the department — he'd
gone to Wisconsin by that time. His way of talking —
he had a kind of machine-gun talk, talk in a rush,
you know, little burst and spurt si — that was something
like Merritt. Of course that's a very small thing.

Both for Joe and Julia I had certain people in
the background of my mind. But not too much. I used
myself in that one fellow there. That's the only
time I think I — no, I used myself other times too.
You almost have to use yourself.

Riess: Who were you?

Stewart: The professor of history, a minor character, really.
I more or less absorbed his point of view and I was
writing from his point of view. I can't think of
his name, but he was the one who wouldn't vote in the
end. But he didn't look like me. He looked like a
picture I saw in a book review. I have no idea who
he looked like, but he didn't look like me at all.

The people in that book I think were pretty
sharply characterized, for a small book. The whole
scene was pretty well organized. I had had very
little experience with giving doctor's orals at that
time, actually. They weren't so common in those
days. There weren't so many people, and I was a
younger man In the department. So it was more based
on my own than anything else; there were several
incidents right out of my own doctor's oral, and
some other instances that people had told me. All
that business about "The Blessed Damozel," for instance,
was told ne as something that happened to a Yale Ph.D.
That was an incredible thing! This man — I think he
said it happened to him, and in pretty much the way

Stewart: I told. it. It was not the same question but it was
something equally unimportant. It was a comparable
way of going at it and trying to break a man down.

The first question in German happened on my
Ph.D. examination. It was a really friendly question,
Just as it was in Angle's case there, because Professor
Krapp at Columbia asked me to explain the "Vierhebungs
theorie." He knew that I knew it! [laughing] So I
explained it. I was almost knocked over when he said
it in German though. I knew what it meant all right,
because I had done some of the reading in German.

Riess: You had that book plotted with maps, I saw, maps of
Julia's room, drawings of the cafe.

Stewart: Yes, I always enjoyed doing that, having a bigger

frame of reference than you actually use. I think we
were talking about that last time, how a lot of what
I did for the maps in Fire didn't get into the book,
because I made the map as something in itself.

Riess: At what stage in your writing does the map develop?

Stewart: Well, it differs in different kinds of things. In

Doctor's Oral the maps weren't very important really,
they were Just fun.

Riess: Were they included?

Stewart: No. On the other hand, with Storm, the various maps
were tremendously important. In a sense when I got
that series of maps done, I had written the book.
They were very difficult, and meant a lot of redrawing,
and much work plotting the whole thing over all those
days, you see. Getting one thing going into another.

I always insisted upon having all the loose ends
tucked in properly. Similarly in Fire. You'd be
surprised at how difficult that is, because this fire
depended upon the terrain very largely, you see, the
terrain, and the tree growth, and so forth. You had
to plot that all out. You would get along in your
plotting, and you'd think of some other incident you
wanted to put in, then you would go back and change
everything, all the way back, you know! After a
while, you'd Just have to freeze it. Keep everything
going there.

Stewart: And of course as you're writing a novel sometimes
certain events don't develop very much and you don't
make much out of them. That was true in Fire. There
were certain things that I thought would be very big
and they didn't turn out very big.

But really, in Storm and Fire, and Years of the
City., mostly Storm and Fire, the maps were very
important. Earth Abides . I didn't have any maps at
all, because I used the scene there in Berkeley. I
had it all in my head.

Rless: As soon as you do the map, it's as if it was a factual
book and a reader would respond within that context,
and even note fallacies.

Stewart: Well, that of course was particularly true of Storm

and Fire. Earth Abides, a little bit. Oh yes, I got
letters, as you probably saw in there, from engineers
and all that sort of thing. That business about the
spark on the owl's wing. That was something that
bothered people quite a bit! But I never got too
much worried about that, because I figured electricity's
a pretty chancy thing. That was one thing. Oh, there
were a few others.

It was translated into Swedish. That was one of
the first languages it was translated into. The Swedes
made a very elaborate translation, with a really top-
rank meteorologist as consultant. Did you see any of
that? A man named Bergeron, who is still living, by
the way. I got to know him, and he's way past ninety
now. Still going strong, one of those indestructible
Swedes. They had him in as consultant, and they
practically ruined the book. They had a lot of
appendices and notes, you know, [laughter] I don't
think anybody read it except somebody who was really
going after instruction in meteorology.

Actually, Bergeron thought I had one thing wrong,
and he changed the map. I didn't know anything about
the translation, though, until after it was finished.
They didn't consult with me. Of course it was in
Swedish, so I couldn't read it.

The great problem they had was with the exclamation
the man used, the "kee-riced! " The translator couldn't
find this in any known English dictionary, [laughter]
They consulted the greatest philologist in the

Stewart: university they could find around there. Finally
somebody got it, you know. Instead of calling up
the embassy and getting some second secretary, who
would have known immediately what I was trying to say.
[laughter] The Swedes are great people, but I think
sometimes they lack a little humor.

Riess: Getting back to a few general questions, would you
say here something about education today, and what
you might choose to do now.

Stewart: Well, I don't agree with the modern attitudes of young
people that there's mostly no relevancy in the past.
I certainly don't agree with that. I go along with
President Truman. I think you can learn something
from the past. We need that very much. The great
trouble now is that there hasn't been enough synthesis
of all these different knowledges. The extent of
knowledge has increased so much that it's very hard
to get any kind of general view. I think that's the
problem for the future, sometime, to synthesize these
things, so you're able to get some kind of view of
life.

Rless: New kinds of curriculum? Interdepartmental things?

Stewart: Well, I think so, yes. I hate that word "inter
departmental" — it never gets anywhere. More synthesis,
yes. Of course there are courses like that. I suppose
some of them are very good ones. I can't go into
detail too much. I think education has two sides, one
being the professional side, interpreting "profession"
in the wide sense; the other is the side that develops
the individual and makes a good citizen out of him so
to speak.

Riess: Do you think in education there should be time out

for kinds of living, and. then coming back to education?
Would you have liked to have done that sort of thing?

Stewart: Not particularly, no. At least I don't think I would
have. That was rather outside the scope of our

Stewart: Imagination at that time. We Just weren't thinking
In those terms. Of course there were people that
did It. As I think I said last time, I looked upon
the Ph.D. rather the other way around, as something
that I wanted to do and get over with so that I
could work on my own more completely. I would
probably not have gone with that Idea of doing some
other kind of work, say going out and teaching for
a year for example.

Rless: So you don't have a lot of "If I were to do It all
over again I would do It another way" feelings?

Stewart: One often thinks of that sort of thing. I'm not at
all sure I did it the right way. But — how are you
going to know? I wouldn't lay down any particular
thing that I would have been. I Just think there are
so many possibilities. I don't think I was ever
outstanding as a classroom teacher. It's so hard to
tell about those things.

Rless: Your quality of welcoming a real challenge in life,
is this part of what's called the Puritan ethic?

Stewart: Well, if I knew what the Puritan ethic was, or Just
what you meant by that, I could say better. I think
the Puritans get blamed for a lot. Usually It's the
Protestant ethic, I think — isn't that what they talk
about now? It isn't quite the same. But I never
could say about that, because it's the Jewish ethic
too, and the Chinese, and lots of people I think
you'll find have pretty much the same Idea. In fact
I don't think the Catholics are lacking it either!
You've got all sorts of Catholics. That gives the
general impression that Catholics are all sort of
southern Italians who are never bothered about anything,
Not so. There are all kinds of Catholics. Lots of
English Catholics probably aren't very different —
they're probably as much part of the Protestant ethic
as anybody else for that matter.

Hiess: Do you have the belief that struggle develops a
person?

Stewart: Well, I suppose I have it, very strongly. It's my
natural way of thinking. As I say, I've always
rather objected to the terminology there, because 1
don't think the Protestants have carried it out any
more strongly than some other groups.

Rless: One of the results seems to be that people measure
life in terms of the effort, the struggle, and when
the struggle ends, they feel adrift. At retirement,
for instance.

Stewart: They really do, a lot of them. We haven't got a good
solution to that question in this country. It's very
bad right now. That's something that I can see pretty
clearly. But I don't know that it rests altogether on
that one attitude, because you do have both the
physical and the mental slowlng-down, which has to be
reckoned with. These people could not do their
regular work in many instances.

I know the last two or three years that I taught,
I felt the mere physical strain of teaching more than
I had before. I don't think I could do it now. The
physical strain of giving a lecture course is much
more than most people realize. Much more than any
person realizes who hasn't done It. I think it's a
question of domination. You have to hold this group
some way, and it's very tiring. For that reason I
think 6? is a very good retirement age for the
university. The question of whether you can retire
gradually and ease out, I think that's very doubtful
too, whether that's a good thing. It's tied up with
the actual weakening of the individual. People are
not as good as they were, very often. Some people
are, of course. But not all.

Riess: I'm suggesting that some people don't let themselves
stop struggling.

Stewart: I think that's a fairly deep individual trait. Some

people Just can't stand Inactivity. I'm not very good
at it myself. You can get activity in various ways.
I know I have tried to adapt myself to the situation.
When I got to be sixty, I said I wasn't going to
hurry any more. I kept that pretty well. I didn't
do much hurrying. I kept out of situations where I
had to hurry, because I don't like to hurry. I
wouldn't cross the street until I could cross the
street without rushing too hard. I do that still.
Of course now it's more or less necessitated. I
started it really before I needed to very much. I
certainly like to keep on being active as much as
I can.

INTERVIEW III, Conversation about priorities and
motivation; the plays; abandoned projects; Fire .
Earth Abides; teaching writing; more abandoned
projects. TReoorded July 16, 1971)

Rless: Once you told an interviewer — at first I thought maybe
it was Just a Joke — that you decided to write a novel
on October 10, 1936 at 11 a.m. on the other side of
Petaluma. Really?

Stewart: Well, it Just happened that I had been working on a
big Job. I had finished Ordeal by Hunger and had
tasted the pleasures of doing that sort of book,
which had a popular audience. I was getting a little
fed up on the other Job I was doing, which was going
to be a long Job. I had to go up to Santa Rosa,
actually, to give a lecture, and on that particular
day, I decided I was going to write a novel. My wife
was with me in the car there, nobody else, and she
thought it was a good Idea. And so that's it, I guess.
It is rather amusing. It's nice to have an exact
answer to a question, [laughter] I didn't quite split
any seconds on it, you see. I got a round number,
11 a.m.

Rless: At that time, was there anything you wanted particularly
to say in a novel or book, or was it Just the idea of
doing that kind of writing?

Stewart: I think it was more the idea of doing Just that kind
of writing. Have I shown you this book, by the way?
This is not like a diary, but a kind of book in which
I write down things that happened which 'I think might
be useful to know when they happened. I'm sure I've
got that in there. [Looking in book.] Yes, it is
there! So that's another proof anyway. Although I
didn't write that down at the time, I don't think. I

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Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

made that book up later,
if you want to.

You can look at that book

I think It would be interesting to know what you
thought should go in this non-diary book.

Well, the first years there was hardly anything,
because I was only putting in exact dates. I could
write in a lot of things more or less, you see, but...
And then, it's Just a lot of notes. It's a very
useful book to have, by the way. It's not like a
diary, but it lets you check up very rapidly on
certain things — not all of them very important. There's
a lot more in there about trips and that kind of thing
than really should be, because that gives you a definite
time you can write down.

Riess: But that's good. In interviewing, it seems like a
lot of time is spent trying to figure out people's
comings and goings.

Stewart: Well, of course you tend to remember things, you say,
"Is that before I went to Europe or after — oh, it was
before." So that gives you — it's not that the trip
to Europe was necessarily important, but it's a kind
of punctuation mark. The stamps in the back here,
that's something I started doing in 1957* Every time I
got a letter from a different country, I put that down
there. Those are all the different countries. Isn't
it amazing!

You wouldn't think that Just in the course of
correspondence — you know, sometimes advertisements
and post-cards people send back from various countries —
all those countries! It's very hard to get another
one, because they're Just way out in the sticks now.
I even got all the little countries in Europe, because
I had a friend who made a trip there. I'd been to
Andorra. That immediately Inspired his going- to
Lichtenstein and San Marino and all the other little
places. He sent post -cards so I got all those. I
Just mention that, because you might wonder what those
stamps are doing in there. Do you want to take that book
along? Because I won't need it of course. I'll be
away. You'll take good care of it, I'm sure.

Riess: And it is something to take care of I

Stewart: Well, yes. It would be hard to replace.

Riess: There ' s a question. What would you take if you had
to abandon this place quickly, at this point, in the
event of a fire?

Stewart: Well, if I had a current manuscript, that had no

duplicate, I think I'd take that. I don't know. It's
pretty hard to say. Of course I've got all of my
book contracts here, and they'd be quite a natural
thing, quite a useful thing to take. And a few books
of that sort. I've got one book that has all my
financial statements in it. It's useful for tax
purposes.

Riess: Oh, you wouldn't take advantage of that opportunity
to leave that kind of thing behind?

Stewart: Well, I don't think that — these are all second thoughts
anyway. We cleaned out so much stuff when we moved,
you see, that I don't have the problem that most people
would have. I've got my personal files still (I haven't
given them to Bancroft), which are really more personal,
they weren't about the books, that sort of thing.
Those I'd hate to lose, but the trouble is, that all
amounts to so much that I couldn't take all of that.
I'd have to grab the first thing that came along.

Is that a good question generally?
Riess: It seems like a good question.

Stewart: That's like the question, if you were going to be
some animal, what animal would you want to be?

Riess: Yes. What animal would you want to be?

Stewart: A seal.

Riess: That's very appealing.

Stewart: Well, it's such a nice happy animal.

Riess: How about an otter?

Stewart: I think otters are very fine. I don't know so much

about otters. I read that one book about otters, but
I've never seen a wild otter. But I think they're very
nice. Of course dolphins are wonderful things, you
know. That's not a bad question though, for a parlor
game. People usually react to it, and you get very

Stewart: different reactions.

Riess: When you decided to write a novel, did you have a

sense of being released from the other thing you had
had in mind?

Stewart: Yes, I enjoyed it very much. I had a very good time
writing it, and it all went very well, I didn't make
any too bad mistakes.

Riess: Would you agree to the idea that there was a book
inside of you waiting to be written?

Stewart: Well, I suppose obviously there was.

Riess: I mean, the idea that there was something to be gotten
out, in the writing of the book.

Stewart: No, I don't think so so much. You mean some release
for myself, that kind of thing? I suppose there was
to some extent, yes. I don't think that was a very
specific object.

Riess: What was the other thing that you were working on
that you abandoned?

Stewart: That was a sort of general history of western Amerian
literature. A very large comprehensive study.

Riess: I remember reading at one point that you had saved
the big Names book for "late in life, for old age
and garrulousness," and I thought maybe the history
of American literature —

Stewart: Well, it's really working out, isn't it!

Riess: Maybe the comprehensive history of western American
literature might have been saved too.

Stewart: No, no, I wouldn't attempt that now. What I don't
like to do now is all the legwork of research. I
find that difficult, partly for physical reasons.
It's just too tiring. And partly for other reasons
too, I suppose. In a detailed subject, I can do a
lot of work. I've done a tremendous amount of work
on this Names book too. I can't very well say that
I haven't done a lot of work there too. I don't'
know why. I think it's because I happen to be

Stewart:

Hless:

Stewart

Bless:

Stewart:

Hless:

Stewart :

Interested In that thing at the moment, so I can do
It.

I find motivation gets to be a more difficult
problem as you get older. I don't know whether most
people notice that or not, but that's part of my
thing, I notice. You're not working for a promotion,
you're not working for money particularly. You don't
really need that money. One thing and another of
that sort. I think motivation gets to be very
Important. I have to be very careful to pick a
subject that I'm really sure I want to do. I don't
think I could possibly do a book for a publisher.

Of course, I never have done that, except In
one case, which was my subject to start with, and
that was the California Trail. But I would find It
more difficult now, anyway.

Was there any writing that you ever did in order to
pay a bill?

Not specifically, no. Of course I've never had any
objection to making money. In the thirties, people
around the University were awfully hard up. Terribly
hard up some of the time. So any little bit of money
that I got in was extremely welcome.

But maybe short stories or something like that, that
you wrote to pay the tax bill?

Oh, I have written some short things, not exactly to
make money, but Just as I wrote novels. I was never
very successful in short stories though. I never
had the knack, some way or another. So I never went
very far with them.

I looked at your plays,
happened with them.

I would like to know what

Well, I never had any luck in that either, really,
but that is understandable because making a break In
writing plays is a very, very difficult business,
the amount of money it takes to put on a play.
Publishing a novel is a very small venture, but a
play is more difficult. I wrote four plays.

I like writing plays very much. They came very
nicely to me. I don't think they're bad plays, either,

Stewart: but as I say, again, I never had the knaok with them.

Riess: Well, it sounds like that was a time when really an
agent oould have worked selling them.

Stewart: I had an agent for those.

Riess: But people haven't seen them, I guess.

Stewart: Well, they have. One of them was put on at the

University, and our section club, the drama section
there, has done three of them. And so they have been
put on, that much.

Funny, I generally write comedies in plays. My
books are not particularly comedies, but some way or
other, whenever I try to write a drama, It always
came out as a comedy, one way or another, maybe a
tragicomedy, but that's the way I saw things. I like
the sense of writing for the theater. I wish that I'd
been able to do it a little bit more, or that I'd
had more incentive to do it.

There's a sense of everything being spatially
related, and I have a pretty strong spatial mind.
Well, It's a temporal mind too, maybe. But I could
always keep these people where they were, what they
were doing, how you got them on and off. That came
very naturally to me. Handling the theme through
dialog I found very good.

Riess: Speaking of the time and space relativity thing, it

seems that idea really took hold of you, particularly
in the play where time stands still.* Can you remember
the growth of that idea?

Stewart: Yes, I can tell you a lot about that. It's rather

irrelevant, most of it. That play started in Grot one,
in Italy, the old Greek colony of Croton. A terrible
little town. We were there one night, and we probably
had drunk a lot of wine at the table, and this man
came wandering through, sort of not doing anything,
Just a crazy kind of Italian setting there. I never
knew what he was doing. He'd wander in and he'd wander
out again. And in the play, you know, this is that
men who keeps wandering and and wandering out, and

*"I Wish I Might1

Stewart: never does or says anything. So we said this would
make a good play, and we began talking about it.
The thing developed up.

I donft know exactly where the idea of the time
standing still developed from. I can't tell you
that.

Riess: The clerk in ths hotel keeps talking about being
interested in science fiction. Maybe there was a
very big vogue for science fiction.

Stewart: Well, there was at that time. But there has been at
a great many times. That's not very unusual. I
thought that play worked out pretty well, though.
That went off.

Then I got this idea of having the scrambled
proverbs. You noticed that part, didn't you? It's
Just a gimmick, but it's a very good comic gimmick.
Those things are rather hard to make up. That is, I
don't know whether I can quote one or not, but you
take two proverbs and run them together.

Riess: Oh, yes! Malopropisms, sort of? Like making a silk
purse out of a red herring, or something like that?

Stewart: [laughing] Yes, that's right.
Riess: Yes. I certainly did notice them.

Stewart: The play that I had in my mind for a long time I
think is a very good play. It's the last one I
wrote, the one-act play about the two people, where
the war breaks out and they don't know what's
happening, and they can't speak the language.

Riess: What was the name of that one?

Stewart: "Beyond the River." I had some other title for it,

too.* I never really made up my mind about the title,

It often struck me in Europe how you were in a
place where you don't speak the language, and maybe

*"Beyond the River," or "Failure of Communication"

Stewart: the radio would be going, and something terrific might
happen and you wouldn't know what It was at all. So
that's really what I tried to work out there. I
thought that worked out pretty well.

The thing that stymied me for a long time was,
I thought I'd have to have a bilingual audience. Then
I figured you could Just cut that bridge entirely,
you see. Just have them all speaking English, but
the stage convention is that they don't understand.
I think that gets across all right.

Riess: There was another play, "Where is Mr. Winkleton?"

that seemed to Involve poltergeists. Can you sum up
"Where is Mr. Winkleton?"

Stewart: Well, I think that's the least successful of the

plays. It's Just an old idea I had there, about a
visit from some other world. Of course there was
another play done on that theme, not so very long
before I wrote that. I waited around too long before
I wrote it. The other wasn't a very good play, but
it got peoples' minds on that subject. As I say, I
don't think my play comes off so well.

Playwriting is a difficult field. There are
only a few plays produced in any year, and then of
course a few amateur attempts. Whereas a novel
doesn't cost very much to publish. There are, I guess,
a couple of thousand novels published every year. So,
even though novels are hard enough to break into, at
least you have a chance.

I never was able to come across in writing plays
really, although I liked to do it. I wrote a play in
19^0 on General Grant. My agent took that quite
seriously and she tried to place it, but couldn't
get it across. I thought particularly on account of
the war, and the situation about the war, the thing
might have some possibility. That's the only serious
play I ever wrote, really. The others I always think
of in terms of comedy.

I wrote one, which Ted helped with some too.
We thought about it together when we were in Italy.
We put it out under two names — the only time I ever
did that. That was the one called "I Wish I Might."
They produced that in the University. It all went

•

Stewart; pretty well, although I didn't see It there; we were
in Greece about then. Then I wrote the Mr. Wlnkleton
play. Then I wrote that one act play "Beyond the
River," which I think has the best possibility of any
of those.

I wouldn't recommend your reading them partic
ularly. I like writing plays tremendously. I'm
sorry that I never was able to establish myself so I
could learn more about it. The whole sense of the
stage and that kind of thing as I said doesn't bother
me at all. I took to it, I thought, very naturally.
Expressing the thing through conversation and
through action, together. Always knowing where you
are and having a visual sense which I think I have
very strongly. Knowing what you can do, what point
of view you can express, all that. I did those things
very rapidly.

Riess: How well would drama have worked for getting across

some of your themes, like environment, or simplifica
tion?

Stewart: Well, it Just never occurred to me, or appealed to
me, to write in that vein. As I say I wrote mostly
comedies. I don't know why. I think the stage always
struck me as an opportunity for being funny, and then
I wasn't funny enough. But that's the way it worked.
Maybe if I'd done a heroic play or something like
that, I'd have gotten away with it. "General Grant"
was, to a certain extent.

Riess: Plays aren't about things like environment, ecology,
anyway.

Stewart: Oh, they could be. Novels aren't either, generally.

Riess: I noticed in your files a parody of the Drama Section
Club.

Stewart: Oh yes. That was lots of fun. That was really lots
of fun. That was with Born Yesterday. Of course,
Born Yesterday was the real play. Oh, I'll never
forget some of those things. Ed Strong was playing
the lead there. I had it all fixed up with him. He
was going to get shaved, you see. That gave him an
excuse to take off his shirt. And underneath there
was a great big tattoo, [laughing] It said "Gertie."

Stewart: His wife's Gertrude! I forget what it was — you know,
a lot of hearts and a naked woman and what not.
[laughter] That was under it when he took off his
shirt. I had that really staked out that time. I
don't think that comes out in the text.

Riess: It was a drama reading club?

Stewart: Well, we act these things, you see. It's not a reading.
We read the parts, but we also act the whole thing.
It's a very remarkable group. It's been going for
over forty years now, and it's very unusual to keep
a group like that going so long. It's really been
quite amazing.

Bless: Nobody memorizes their part?

Stewart: No, we don't memorize parts at all. That's what makes
it so much better, because you don't have the strain
of remembering your part, and you can really throw
yourself into the acting. Then of course you get all
sorts of funny situations, where people should be
doing something and have to stop and look at the
book. But it's really lots of fun. That was one of
the best things we ever had, really, because it really
came off in a big way.

Riess: Were you in it for forty years? Are you still in it?

Stewart: We're still in it, yes. I'm pretty much inactive

now. We've put on a lot of plays in that time. In
fact the first plays we ever gave were at our house.
We even re-wrote some of the original plays as we
went along in there. I had one very good line — the
heroine Just gets mixed up. First she starts
declaiming about this country and its institutions,
the people who inhabit it — and I got the other ones
in, about the people who inhibit it, and the people
who cohabit it. [laughter] I thought they were very
good variations.

Riess: Did you ever go on with your idea of the story of
the deceased member of the club whose history ends
with his birth? A member of a club dies, and in a
kind of "in memoriam" speech they never mention
anything of his life but only what happened prior to
it, because it is the events prior to a person's
life that make the life.

•

Stewart: Yes. No, I never did anything with that. The thing
there is you get tagged every now and then around
the University to do somebody's obituary, which is
always kind of a lugubrious matter, some friend of
yours has died, you know, and I think that's what
got me thinking about that. You see, you have only
a short piece to write anyway, you've got very strict
space limitations. If you really were going to do
it, you'd exhaust your space before you got to the
time a man was born. But I never did anything more
with that.

Riess: Being yourself an action man, that doesn't seem a
fair way to approach people's biographies.

Stewart: Oh, no. It would be a gimmick.

Riess: I wonder really how much you believe in the idea.

Stewart: Well, it's Just a little slight projection of the

fact that people say, "If you give me a child that's
five years old, he's all fixed by that time." This
Just puts it back a little bit farther. The heredity
and the prenatal Influence might be thought as
determining that. Actually I think heredity deter
mines a great deal of people anyway. There's no
question about that. I don't know how much the
prenatal does. I don't think anybody knows enough
about that.

Riess: Except that in There Was Light you said that Joel
Hildebrand had said that if he'd gotten hold of you
earlier he could have made you into a great chemist.*
And I've understood from our earlier interviews that
if things had gone differently in the University that
you might have become a great administrator rather
than a great —

Stewart: [laughing] Well, keep that "great" out of it! I

don't think I said that! No, I don't think I would
however, actually. Those are Just interesting
speculations.

*p. 1^4-8, There Was Light.

Riess: In an Interview you gave after Fire. I saw your comment
that you felt terrible at the end of writing it, and
you say, "one of the reasons that I felt terrible at
the end of writing Fire may have been that in some
sense I was repeating myself, and I knew most of the
tricks which I was playing." Would you comment on
that now?

Stewart: Well, I don't remember particularly about the way I
felt at that time now. But that's a general idea
that I've been very sensitive about, doing the same
thing twice. It bothers me. Of course that's what
a great many writers do all the time. It's their
stock in trade. They learn a few tricks, and they
keep on using them. I never liked that. In lecturing
it always bothered me. I hated getting around to
the same point the next year, [laughing] Of course
you can't help yourself there, because you do go
around. In particular, I would think, well now maybe
somebody's repeating this course I [laughter]

So I did have that feeling about writing Fire.
I think in a way it was the least Interesting book
for me to do, because in a sense I was using the same
tricks, and I knew the results I could get out of
certain things. That failed to stimulate me the way
other books have done. Although I think the book
came off all right.

Riess: Is it possible that your closeness to the actual fire
made It seem a real tragedy?

Stewart: Well, that might be true.

Riess: I had a little speculation: In Earth Abides, one

feels your acceptance of devastation, and of survival.
I wonder whether the ideas of Earth Abides were with
you at all back in Fire?

Stewart: Well, I think they were. I thought about that book
for quite a while before I wrote it. It must have
been in my mind when I was writing Fire, but I'm not
sure that there Is such a great difference between
the two books in their attitudes. Because they both
are of natural phenomena, a thing you can't argue
about, although they tried to argue with Fire
certainly. I don't think the two books are so very
different in their attitudes, no. If that's what
you're interested in.

Riess: In Fire there 's the Idea that fire Is senseless and
we should do everything to stop fire, and that fire
is a terrible force. And yet when there's finally
the fire in Earth Abides, the reader is surprised
that it hasn't happened earlier, and people Just go
someplace else, and the fire has more rights than the
people, kind of.

Stewart: Yes. Well, actually in Fire, as I wrote the book, I
got into a certain amount of divided feeling about
this, because fire is a natural force. The landscape,
the forests, and everything else in the world have
been formed against the background of fire, so that
a lot of these things are not necessarily bad. I got
more of that feeling. But I didn't really change
the attitude of the book, which was that this fire
was bad. I got into a little bit of psychological
difficulty there.

You know, the one man in Fire who is not emotional
about the whole thing, the Super, he came to represent
my attitude more than anybody else. I'm still
that way, as a matter of fact. I don't mind cutting
down trees. It's part of the cycle. I think small
trees are Just as beautiful as big trees, as long as
you give them a chance to grow. Just preserving all
these forests doesn't strike me as so important, so
long as you don't wreck things by bad cutting of the
trees and destroying the land, and all that. That
was the attitude of that man, you see. He saw it in
the larger pattern. The other fellow got emotional
about it. And of course he made mistakes partially
because he got emotional about it. He tried to save
the wrong things.

Riess: How long was Earth Abides in the back of your mind?

Stewart: I don't know when the idea first came to me. I

suppose it was probably five or ten years in my mind.

Riess: Was there ever any question about who would survive?
About whether Joey would survive?

Stewart: I rewrote the middle part of that book more severely

than I ever rewrote any other book, novel or otherwise.
Right now, offhand, I can't tell you all the details
that got shifted around in there. I think Joey's
death was always part of it, though. As I say, that
was the part that gave me the most trouble. How do

Stewart: you think it stands up to the rest of the book now?

Riess: I don't find weak parts in it, but I wondered whether
the Joey thing was something that you hashed around
at all in your mind, whether in thinking about the
book over ten years your thoughts were growing and
changing in ways that would affect the outcome of
the book.

Stewart: I wish I could tell you more precisely, because as
I say, I have a hard enough time keeping all my
books in mind, much less keeping in mind the books
they might have been if they had been some other
way. [laughing] I'm a little bit vague about what
it was. I remember the first part carried right
through. That was fine. I really didn't pause on
that. Then the middle of a novel, I think, generally
speaking, is the hardest part to write. You realize
that?

You start out fresh, with a strong idea, or you
shouldn't be writing at all. And that rush carries
you through maybe a third of the way. Then you get
more and more complications in the middle and it gets
difficult. Then, after a certain part, you see the
light at the end of the tunnel, and you come through.
And in Earth Abides the middle part would about end
with the death of Joey. After that, you see, things
were laid out. They are laid out in the writer's
mind, anyway. He can work from there more easily.

The whole business in the middle there — the
first part of the Second Book, or whatever it's called
there — that was the difficult part.

Riess: The book has two sections that are called the "Quick
Years" and then in between them —

Stewart: There are three parts, you see. The third part is
quite short. The third part was fine to do too.
That went very well Just as the first part did. The
middle part was the difficult one. I'm Just glad
that it got good enough so that you don't think about
it as being the weak part.

•

Riess: Who did you model Ish in old age on?

Stewart: I don't know. I've always liked doing old people.
There are quite a few old people in my books, and I

Stewart:

Hless:
Stewart:

Hless:
Stewart :

Hiess:
Stewart:

Bless:
Stewart :

wrote them before I was old, too! But there's some
thing that has always appealed to me with writing
about them. I don't know why.

Did I tell you about the boy who came up from
Stanford to talk about Earth Abides a few months
ago? I asked him what his favorite part of It was,
or what he thought of It, Just to make conversation.
He picked out Immediately — he said the part he
thought was the great part was the conversation of
Ish and Jack at the first part of the last book. He
said, "Oh, that's just right."

I don't know how much of it was he reflecting
his own relationship with his father or something.
But I think that's a good part too. That's a very
successful part, where he talks about the Americans.

Was this anything like what your father was as you
remember?

I don't think particularly,
consciously in mind anyway.

I didn't have that

What's that pinching of Ish all about?

Well, that's Just the way some people do with their
gods, you know. They have that curious attitude.
They have great respect and fear for them in some
ways, but the gods have got to behave too! I don't
know exactly where that comes from, but I'm sure
there are things I've read about.

When Man was coming out, you wanted to do it under
a different name.

Yes. I wanted it to have no name at all. After all,
it's called Man, an Autobiography. I Just wanted to
put it out that way, but they wanted to use my name.
It's kind of silly the way it is now.

But you could have prevailed, couldn't you?

Oh, I suppose, yes, but I don't know. I never like
to fight too much with my publishers. After all,
they've got to think of it in terms of how they can
promote the book and so forth.

Riess: Then also in the early notes and things on Man, It
sounds like it was thought of as a novel.

Stewart: In a sense it is, I suppose. It depends on what

you mean by a novel. "Novel" is a very vague term.

Hiess: Fiction.

Stewart: Yes. Well, it still is difficult. Because after

all, it obviously is a kind of fictionalized scheme,
this personification of man. (If you can call it
personification.) And in a sense, using the form of
"I," for instance, is a novelist! c device. What I
don't like is having Ordeal by Hunger called a novel.
I guess I've spoken about that already. I don't
mind it in Man because in a sense it is.

Rless: I wonder if the decision to sell it through that
newly formed nonfiction book club helped sales.

Stewart: Well, that didn't amount to much, I think, one way
or the other. Apparently it was one of the times
when they were trying to start a lot of book clubs
and that was another one. I don't think it ever got
anywhere very much. I don't think that made much
difference.

Riess: Did you do much revision of Man?

Stewart: No, not much. You can probably find some of the
manuscript in there. No, I wrote that very fast.

Riess: Did any of the readers at Random House give you any
warning of the furor there would be about the book?

Stewart: No, I don't think they did. That was probably mostly
a result of the fact that part of It was published
in Reader's Digest. That took it to a group of people
that would be stirred up about a problem like that.
You mean the religious?

Riess: Yes, and the evolutionary things.

Stewart: Yes, that surprised me. Then you see, even more

surprising was the fact that the Norwegian publisher
wouldn't publish it. He got a contract on it, and
then wanted to revise it, to take that part out. I
wouldn't let him. That was one time I did stand on
my rights. And he never published it. That surprised

Stewart: me very much, because Norway's a pretty advanced
country, after all.

Riess: Yes. Do you think it was the way the synopsis was
handled that got to the people in Reade r * s Di^e s t?_ •
or do you Just think it was the readership of
Reader's Digest?

Stewart: Well, I never studied the way it was presented
particularly. I don't like those condensations
anyway. I think it was probably mostly the type of
people it got to.

Riess: Do you have any kind of control over the condensations?

Stewart: No, you don't have, really, and it's a bad system.
I wouldn't want to have anything to do with the
condensation of my own book. You Just let it go,
and the publisher always likes to sell it. They pay
pretty well. People get some idea of the book. I
don't know. I'm Inclined to think that the best thing
for an author to do would be not to allow any con
densations at all. They're not satisfactory things.

Riess: Fire, condensed in Ladies Home Journal, became a tale
for women, and in Reader's Digest, Judith was left out
completely.

Stewart: Well, you've studied it more than I have! But that's
natural, I suppose, that that would be the difference
in the two. That is funny, though.

Riess: Judith does come mostly in the beginning and the end
of Fire, as parentheses, kind of.

Stewart: Well, she could be left out.

Riess: As I went through stuff in Bancroft Library, a lot

of it was ideas written on one side of paper, and on
the back would be an old exam paper from one of your
classes.

Stewart: Yes, I recycled even in those days I

Riess: One of the exams was to write an essay on Thoreau's
attitudes — based on the philosophy in Walden — what
they might consistently be at the present toward
price regulation, Jet travel, fascism, strikes, eto.
And then you warned the student not to make it "an
imaginative orgy, but a reasonable argument." Now
I wonder, actually, what kind of a teacher you were.
If you had gotten back a really good imaginative
orgy, wouldn't that have been the one that you would
have liked?

Stewart: Yes, if it were really good. But then the trouble is
that if the student hasn't read the book and doesn't
know anything about Thoreau and Just tries to write
a romance which doesn't — you don't want to give them
much credit. You aren't going to get a really good
thing, you know.

Riess: In that period of time?

Stewart: No. It's very very rare that you get an examination
which has any real literary quality to it, naturally.
Occasionally you do.

Riess: How did your students approach you as an author?
What did your being an author do?

Stewart: Well, I wouldn't say that most of them knew anything
about it in the first place, [laughter] You'd be
surprised at how much students keep their professors
in compartments, you know. "This man's a professor,
and he doesn't do anything else." They're always very
much amazed to see that you may be married or have
a family or something like that. I think that was
particularly true in my case. Lots of them didn't
know I wrote books at all. Sometimes they'd come
around and be surprised, you know, when they found
out.

I know there were a lot who did know about it,
and did like my books and very possibly took some
courses because I was a writer, but I was, on the

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Hiess:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

whole, very little conscious of it. They didn't do
much about it. They didn't come in and Mooh and ah"
about it.

Did they bring you a bunch of their writing?

No, not very much. Most students are too diffident
to do that sort of thing. Except for the students,
of course, to whom I was giving a writing course. I
didn't encourage it either, because in the first
place almost all the writing would be bad, and in the
second place, you can't do much about it. At least
I was never able to do very much about it. You'd
have to have Just exactly the right student in the
right circumstances where you could say, "Go on and
do something," and that doesn't work out very well.
So I never really encouraged them to hand in a lot of
stuff, except again the students I had in the writing
course.

Did you have some good ones there?

Oh yes. I've kept up with some of them. Over a long
period of time you maybe have some influence on them.
Of course the attitude toward the teaching of writing
is a strange one really. A student takes a three
hour course and then wonders why he isn't a novelist.
But if he were going to be, say, a concert pianist,
he would, expect to take years and years of lessons
to get the technique. But some way or other, writing
is — the idea is that anybody can write, if you Just
have a little bit of facility. They don't work hard
enough at it.

A little passion —

Sometimes it's true. There are people who don't need
any more than that, but the other analogy holds to
some extent — again, if you're trying to be an artist,
you would take years and years of expensive lessons,
and all sorts of training.

Once. I think it has changed.

It has changed a good deal I suppose now.
look at some things it has, anyway.

Just to

A lot comes with natural ability in all those
things. That used to be my answer when people would

.-SB"

• • ,' * '

Stewart: ask me, "Why don't they teach people to write better?
Why can't you train authors In the university?" I
would say, "Well, we could if you would give them to
us for five or ten years. Then we could make something
out of them. But you can't do it in one semester."

Riess: What writers do you like these days?

Stewart: Well, I've read so much, of course, it's hard for me
to pick out what I really like or approve of at the
present time. A lot of things I don't like. I could
tell you something about that.

For instance, I don't like these vague and
uncertain things that you don't know whether to take
as allegory or symbolism or whether it's a real story.
I sometimes think when you can't tell a good story
you call it symbolism. That sort of thing I don't
like. I like good clean-cut writing, something that
goes ahead and does not confuse the Issue by its
style.

Take a thing like Faulkner's Absalom — most of
Faulkner, not all of Faulkner. But to try and get
into that book and try to get down what it really
tells, it's a quite impossible kind of melodrama,
and yet it's so difficult to follow what's happening
that some way or other it seems very important. I
can't see that it really is, when you get right down
to it. That's one thing.

I like Hemingway tremendously, good Hemingway.
I think he has in some respects the best approach
from my point of view. I don't go for all his hooey
on certain ideas, but I like his approach, his
writing.

Riess: You mean like his thing about courage, and manliness?

Stewart: I like courage. No, the courage idea I take pretty

well. I think that's what counts too. I don't go

for his super-manhood necessarily, no. I'm not so
much for that.

Oh, I don't know. Ask me another question* I
don't seem to be perking on that one.

Riess: Well, that was related to the idea that I don't see
how a person can teach writing anyway.

Stewart: Well, one thing about a writing course in a university,
is that it gives the person a certain amount of time
to work at it. You work at that, and you can get
three units credit, so that Justifies spending some
time from the point of view of the university on it.
I think that's probably what's most Important. The
student can get the association with some other
students who are writing too, and that has some
importance. And he can get something out of the
professor. I've Influenced some people, I know —
Milton Lott did very well on the novel he started in
that class, but he wasn't particularly complimentary
to me because he says what I really accomplished was
I told him to get started writing, and — [laughing]
he'd been fussing around, "should I do it this way
or should I do it that way?" and that kind of thing.
So I finally Just shoved him into it and when he got
going he was fine. Something like that is probably
important. After all, he wrote beautifully, that
part of that book. Then he never really got going
on another one. I think he published three books.

Riess: You have said that every author needs three books.

Stewart: Yes. The first novel's hard, and the second novel
is harder, and the third novel is hardest. If you
get by the third novel, then you're probably all
right. Lots of people never get beyond the first
novel of course.

Riess: I noted that Man was used as a textbook by some
teachers.

Stewart: It was used to some extent that way, yes.
Riess: What do you think of that idea?

Stewart: I thought it was fine. It was a good textbook.

[laughing] It never really went too far, though.
It's oversimplified, I guess. Didn't appeal to the
academic mind too much.

Riess: Did you ever do any additional material for Man?
Stewart: No. There never was any call for it.

Riess: There was a point where you were thinking of doing

"Man in the Atomic Age." Maybe it was being reissued?

Stewart: I don't think so, but I did a little introduction for
it, not so long ago, for a French edition. There
are so many of these reprints, I can't remember them
all. I'm not sure that I've ever got a copy of that
French edition. It may not be published yet.

Riess: I wondered whether you had ever had the occasion to
update American Ways of Life?

Stewart: I thought about that very definitely. I tried to get
the publisher to reissue it, and they thought it
ought to be brought up to date. At the time I didn't
think there was much sense in that. About the only
part that would have to be changed very much would
be the one on sex. I think there has been a consider
able shift in that.

Riess: Did you read the Greening of America, by Charles
Reich? [Random House, 1970]

Stewart: Yes.

Riess: What did you think of that?

Stewart: It didn't impress me very much. I didn't think that
he was critical enough. His classes — he took all the
best possible examples in each one. His young person
was Just a wonderful young person, and his old con
servative was Just a wonderful old conservative. You
don't get those people in too large numbers. I didn't
think too much of it for that reason.

I would think it's the kind of book that has
been read a great deal, and probably has had a
considerable amount of influence, but I think it's
going to be a book that will be forgotten very fast.
I think that people are snatching at straws around
here now. He was about the only optimistic thing
that you could lay your hands on. I don't think it
will be a book which has a very long lasting influence,

Riess:

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart:

Rless:

I was interested in some other ideas in your files
[Carton 6, The Bancroft Library]. One was to write
the story of a god.

Yes, that's an idea that has intrigued me. I never
did it, and don't think I ever shall. It's been done
to some extent by various people. That would fit in,
you see, very well with the kind of thing that I
work with at times, the history of an idea put into
a story. That was to have the god talking, you see,
himself. His career, how he starts as a small god
and works up to be the god of a powerful people.
After a while, of course, he fades out. When he gets
to the end, all that is left of him now is the fact
that when we say "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe," that's
the remnant of his ritual. As long as children say,
"Eeny, meeny, miney, moe," he still has a little bit
of life.

As I remember it, it would have worked out that
these other gods tell him, "You're gone. You have
nothing left." And he has to hunt around until he
finds children saying this, so that he can still keep
on going.

In notes from 19^9 you mention your satires,
were your satires?

What

Well, those were some little things I wrote, which
my agents never were able to do anything with. They
probably weren't marketable, but I liked them. They
were three little pieces, Just the usual trick — at
least it's rather usual for me — of Just changing the
rules of something and seeing the way it would work.
This is the old device of the visitor from another
world, you know. One section was the question of
what If they had reversed our situation. With us
the intake of food is a social occasion, but you see,
the elimination of food is obscene, or semi-obscene, a
thing that you do in privacy. I Just reversed it
the other way. You went into a separate compartment
to eat your food, but you got together when you were
eliminating it. That was the idea that one was worked
out on. The others — I don't remember exactly how
they worked out, but that was the general idea.

I would like to know what the other two would have
been I You can't say to me that they were in a
similar vein and Just leave it at that I [laughter]

Stewart: Well, one of them had something to do with sex, I
remember that. I can't remember exactly how I
handled that one. Ifve still got copies of those
things around somewhere. They're probably In the
Bancroft Library. I'm not absolutely sure. I've
got a little bit of stuff up in my office. I'd be
glad to have you read it. I've got several things
that you might be interested in.

Riess: Oh. And I wanted to find out what happened to the
unfinished murder, the detective story. [Carton 5]

Stewart: Isn't it all there?

Riess: Well, the files are labeled "unfinished" and so I
took you at your word that it was unfinished.

Stewart: I think it's probably unfinished in the sense that I
never sent it for publication. I think the ending
is there. It's unfinished in a qualitative sense.

Riess: Because that would seem like really kind of a
different writing for you.

Stewart: Oh, yes, I did that very early on. That must have
been done in the early thirties, before I had ever
published a novel.

I have another partial manuscript also, that
fits in with those things. Oh, I got sort of tired
of working on this. It's not a bad idea, though.
This was again the change in the rules idea. How
you work out, for instance, if the laws of gravity
suddenly changed, what would happen? Which you can
work out pretty well. Of course you don't know all
the side effects.

And then another one — of course a great deal
depends upon what angle the earth's axis tips at,
and there are lots of theories that it has changed
its position. You see, if you consider, say, that
it changed and went straight up, that would make
absolutely appalling differences in the world. It
would change the climatic cycles completely. Or if
you changed the rate of the spin of the earth, that
would do all sorts of things that you don't think
of offhand.

•

Stewart: I was going to carry that on into less physical

and more social matters. The idea has always Intrigued
me, for instance, that if all the males in the world
should die, it would be a very interesting situation.
All the men, say, except the unborn babies. Then, you,
see, the race would carry on all right, but you would
have Just terrific social problems. There would be
no men, and carrying on the mere physical set-up of
the world would be extremely difficult for women.
There 's no doubt they could do it, but there are so
many jobs there are no women trained for, really at
all. There are some women doctors. They would be
tremendously outnumbered of course. They could hardly
carry on. But there are very few women engineers.
They are perfectly capable of doing these things, but
they Just wouldn't know how. They'd have an awful
time keeping up any going concern.

Then of course you'd have the social problem.
Here would be these babies born, and here they'd be
growing up in a wholly feminine world, all these older
women eyeing them speoulatively as they approach
puberty. And of course, whether they would have any
interest in the older women, whether they wouldn't be
much interested in their contemporaries, the girls
that were growing up. So you've got really a whole
set-up there. That's a fantasy that's intriguing.

I had another book I was figuring on. I did some
work on it too, but I gave that up because it faced
too many of the same problems as Earth Abides. I
wanted to have a book in which you had the atomic
destruction, with a certain number of people surviving.
I'll bet right now there are bombproof s in Texas or
someplace where people are stocked to live for years.
If you had as much money as some of these people in
Texas, wouldn't you do that? You could live through
almost indefinitely. It would be difficult to work
out, but you'd get yourself a pretty good hideout I'd
think, stocked with enough food, and air-purifying
equipment. If you have enough energy you can do
anything like that. I talked that over with chemists
and so forth. There are a lot of interesting ideas,
but I felt I was repeating myself too much.

Riess: And how would you stand on the whole question of

what kind of life to repeat when it became possible
to come above ground? You had done the whole fantasy
of Earth Abides.

J»

•

J3B

Stewart: Well, that was part of the trouble. I didn't want to
start the whole thing over again. My idea on this
one though, was not to deal with the reconstruction.
In fact I was rather going to end with a ship coming
in from Australia or something like that. It turned
out in the end that it had not covered the whole
earth; there was still a sufficient amount of the
earth left habitable. That way I got out of the
problem of the reconstruction. Things were Just as
bad as ever, in other words.

Riess: One of the things, of course, about Earth Abides.
is that the earth isn't devastated.

Stewart: That was definite from the very beginning. Of course
that was conceived before the time of the atomic
bomb. In a way it's curious people were interested
as much in it as they were, because they were thinking
so much in terms of the atomic bomb — as they still are,
But that was Inherent in the book from the very
beginning, the fact that it was only man who was
removed.

INTERVIEW IV, Some other writers and poets:
Hemingway, H.L. Davis, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost;
"stages" of writing a book (maybe); the collected
work in retrospect. (Recorded September 21, 1971)

Stewart :
Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

My wife said you have a lot of questions for me, and
I can just lie back and answer them.

When we were on vacation, I read the Paris Review
interviews. Do you know the series?

Yes. I have never read them though.

I thought that I would come to this interview with
you more or less as if I had never been here before,
and treat you strictly as a writer. I think I've
been taking you on your word as a university person
who also did a lot of writing, and now I want to think
of you as Just a writer.

Did you subscribe to the Paris Review?

No.

Did you know anybody that did?

I don't remember anybody,
though.

There may have been,

In what way, in the twenties and thirties, would you
have been following contemporary writing?

In the twenties I did not follow it very much. In
the thirties I worked around to it more. I read
reviews like the New York Times — I always kept in
touch with that — which gives you the best general
coverage. And I saw other reviews too, like the

•

81*

Stewart:
Rless:
Stewart :

Hless:

Stewart:

Hless:

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

Saturday Review and the Herald Tribune Books. I never
got Into the more esoteric reviews, very much.

Was there a group of people In Berkeley who were
Interested In this kind of expatriate movement?

I don't think so very much. Howard Baker and Dorothy
Baker were in that to some extent. Howard was over
there during the twenties, and knew Gertrude Stein
and some of the other people. He was about the only
one I can think of really, around Berkeley.

Was there anybody who would have been teaching anything
so contemporary on campus?

I don't think we went in much for contemporary at
that time. Of course, T. K. Whipple was doing his
writing then, and he was probably doing something on
that in his courses. Do you know his work? He did a
book or two on contemporary authors. But it wasn't
the expatriate particularly. He was not much interested
in that. He wrote more on people like Sinclair Lewis,
and Willa Gather. A more American group.

Would the students at that point have been modelling
themselves on — for instance, what was the effect on
writers of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises?

Oh. Well, that had quite a big effect. The other
Hemingway books too. Farewell to Arms. They had a
big effect, I think, on students and everybody else.
There was a whole Hemingway wave of writing at that
time. It never affected me directly, I never started
writing about that kind of thing, but I think his
whole general attitude affected me considerably.

What was his whole general attitude?
sum it up?

How would you

I opened myself up on that one! Well, in the first
place, his style, that marvelously clean-cut style
with which he wrote, which seems to me so far removed
from Gertrude Stein, who was supposed to have had an
influence on him. They seem to me to be completely
opposite types. And I think that certainly had its
influence on me, although I never directly imitated
it.

Stewart: And I think his Ideas had an Influence too.

That is, his liking to get close to the subject, and
really experience what he was writing about, which I
think is a trait with Hemingway.

Hiess: To experience it in the process of writing about it?

Stewart: No, I think before he wrote about it.

Hiess: I wanted to ask you about literary round-table things.

Stewart: We had very little of that, as far as I was in contact
with it, anyway. I think not enough. I remember
Louis Simpson, the poet, was out here in the department
for five years or so, and one reason he left was he
didn't think we had enough of that sort of thing. He
put it in terms of street cafes.

Riess: And when was it that he was here?

Stewart: He was here about 1955 *° *62, something like that.

Hiess: And there wasn't anything here then?

Stewart: Well, I don't know that it's particularly characteristic
in the United States in general, is it?

Rless: I have the image, correct or not, of places like the
Algonquin.

Stewart: Yes, there is some of that. The Southern Review group,
also.

Hiess: I guess the New York Algonquin kind of people were
humorists mostly.

Stewart: I think they were more than that. They were critics.

Riess: It opens up a consideration of why people write. It
seems almost, for some of the people who write, that
if there were that sort of round table thing, it
would take a lot of the steam off. I mean, if the
point of writing is communication, once you've done
it, you've done it.

Stewart: I would rather go along with that opinion, that all

this talking about it isn't particularly good. There
tend to be people who talk about writing, and people

•

Stewart :

Rless:

who write,
that idea.

I would rather tend to go along with
Which Is what you were suggesting.

Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart:

I know that you — having seen one end of It — have had
a very long correspondence with H. L. Davis, and I
wondered If he was somebody with whom, for Instance
in your letters, you would develop Ideas — or whether
there was anybody with whom in correspondence you
would develop ideas for a book.

No, I don't think there was. I don't think I ever
developed very many ideas with him. There are a
fair number of letters there, but of course it's
spread over a good many years too. It was not a very
active back and forth conversation.

It's so vivid when a letter comes.

Yes, he was a marvelous writer. Now he, during most
of that time, you know, had a fairly frustrating
career as a writer. Do you know his work?

No.

Well, he did one wonderful book, Honey in the Horn.*
He never really got together with himself again. He
didn't do anything for quite a while after that.
Then he did write. He didn't do it very well. And
he had — he even had a lot of financial troubles,
because he couldn't keep writing very well.

He wrote a wonderful letter I I was very fond of
him. He was a very curious man, as so many writers
are of course, but he was a little more so than usual.
He had sort of started out as a kind of hillbilly
singer, as they went in those days. He did it with
a guitar. One of the great evenings in my life was
when we had, over at the house on San Luis Road, let's
see, Carl Sandburg and Bud Bronson** and Harold Davis
all there singing.

*H.L. Davis, Honey in the Hom« William Morrow Co.,
N.Y., 1935-

**Bertrand H. Bronson.

•

Stewart: You don't know Bronson? He's a professor at
Berkeley, retired now. He could play the guitar
all around them. He's a much better guitar player
than either of the others. But he's not a born
performer, you see. They were perfomers. It was
wonderful. They'd pass the thing back and forth,
and sing different songs. That was a wonderful night.

Riess: Did you have your accordion at that point?

Stewart: No, I kept out of it. I'm not in that class! [laughter]

Riess: How did you meet Davis?

Stewart: Well, he used to live up on Buena Vista, where it
goes up the hill, after he'd written Honey in the
Horn. I don't know exactly how I first met him, but
through some neighbor up there. Then he had a house
up in Napa Valley, up in the hills, before people went
to Napa Valley much. We used to go up there and see
him. He was married to his first wife then. They
were fighting some of the time. They got divorced
before too long. He never had any children. He
never really was a very house-broken man, if you know
what I mean. He was always living in a mess and
drinking coffee all the time, at all hours of the
day, thick black coffee, keeping a horse practically
in the house. That was the general style of life
that he led.

Riess: A Bohemian?

Stewart: Well, he would have scorned that title, [laughter]
I wouldn't call him a Bohemian. He was a natural,
really, kind of a natural backwoodsman. Always plenty
of guns around. Not much of a drinker. He drank
hardly any alcohol. He had terrible teeth. His teeth
were always going to kill him, according to his wife,
and I guess eventually they did.

He got married again and lived down in Mexico,
largely because it was cheaper, but also because he
liked it down there. He'd been down there a lot,
and Betty, his second wife, had been too. We saw
them some also. And they'd come back up here
occasionally. He had quite an interesting career.

Then he got gradually sicker and sicker and poorer
and poorer. They had a little house down in Oaxaca.

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

Bless:
Stewart :

Riess:

They managed to live one way or another. I suppose
she picked up a few Jobs, acting as a guide. She
spoke very good Spanish. She'd, acted as a guide
for tourists, and I suppose they kept going one way
or another. He got sicker and sicker. Finally he
had to have a leg amputated. I don't know exactly
what he died of, but I think It was his teeth or
something like that. He never took any care of
himself.

Did he have an attitude about it?
thing of principle?

Did he make It a

No, I don't think so. I think he Just liked to live
that way, and he did it. "I have paid my price to
live with myself on the terms that I willed.11 Ever
hear that?

No. You say it like you're quoting it.

I am. That's from Kipling, a part of Kipling nobody
ever knows.* I always appreciated the line. I think
it applied to Harold too.

After he died, everybody started worrying about
his wife, how she was going to live, on what. It
seemed to me she could probably take care of herself
better without him than with him, because he wasn't
bringing in much money. But just about the time they
started worrying about her, why, she married a
millionaire, [laughter] In fact, she married Harold's
publisher. She was quite a person too, his second
wife.

According to legend, at least, Harold was her
fourth husband, and her other husband was the fifth.
I'm not sure about that — she's been married at least
three times I know, but I wouldn't guarantee the five.
I always said she was a professional wife. That is,
she had to be married to somebody, taking care of
them. She is a very nice person. When we last heard,
he was in Australia raising goats.

Sandburg was here then too.
yours?

Was he a friend of

*Kipling, "Epitaphs," Vol. 28, Scrlbners, 1919-

Stewart: He became quite a good friend toward the end of his
life. It happened accidentally. He came out here
one time to lecture, and he expected to be put up.
The person who was handling him for the University
asked if we wanted to have him for a guest, and we
said sure. So he came out to see us, and then he
stayed with us several times after that. We got to
know him very well.

He was with us the last time when he came out,
and he'd really gone to pieces. He should have
stayed at home. That was a terrible thing. He was
Just gone.

Hiess: Was he sick?

Stewart: He was senile. He shouldn't possibly have been trying
to put on a show. He couldn't remember the words of
his own songs. He just hung on too long. He brought
his wife along that time, to take care of him. She
did what she could, but she couldn't help him out on
the platform.

Riess: When you knew him earlier, was he the kind of person
you could talk to about what he was doing?

Stewart: Oh yes, he was, very much. He was always talking

about his songs, singing with his guitar. He was a
very pleasant fellow. I liked him. And of course,
Frost came out in those years too, you know. We never
had them together. They were an interesting contrast
in many ways. Of course they hated each other. It
wouldn't have been a good idea to have them together,
though it might have been fun.

Hiess: Why did they hate each other?

Stewart: They were very different types. I can see why they

didn't get along at all. They were both great actors.
People don't realize that, about Frost particularly.
Frost was a great actor. He played his part very
well. Sandburg was a great actor tool They played
different parts.

I think Robert always rather liked me, because
he realized I saw through his part. Most people
didn't, you know. Most people thought he was really
this great humanist, and so forth. He was actually
something different from that. He was a great

•

•
•

Stewart: conservative, you see, really.
Sandburg was a real liberal.

Almost reactionary,

I always thought one of the most interesting
times we ever had with that pair was the time when
Frost talked at the Inaugural. Do you remember that?
The Kennedy Inaugural? And Sandburg happened to be
staying with us at that time. He never got up till
late, ordinarily, but he came padding up the stairs
early that morning to hear the ceremonies. He never
carried any clothes with him. He carried one suit,
and I don't think he had a pair of slippers. He came
padding up in some kind of old bathrobe I think we'd
probably lent him [laughing]. He came up to hear
this. He was delighted when Robert forgot his part.
I never believed that at all, I always believed —

Riess: You didn't believe he'd forgotten his part?

Stewart: No. No. I'm a complete cynic. That was a beautiful
piece of acting. One of the best things he ever did.
Of course my wife was always telling him to get some
glasses. He never could see anything, [laughter]

In the first place, he was supposed to write a
poem for the Inaugural, which he shouldn't have done,
because he didn't support Kennedy. He didn't like
Kennedy. Of course, Carl should have had the Job
really, because he'd been an out and out supporter of
Kennedy way back. But the Kennedys of course asked
Frost, probably never even thought of Sandburg. But
he would have put on a good show.

Well, you see this is my interpretation. In
the first place, Frost couldn't write a very good
poem for the Inaugural, because his heart wasn't in
it, you see. He Just couldn't turn out a poem on
something he didn't want; so he wrote this terrible
thing. Then he started to read it. Either he broke
down, or else he'd planned to break down. So he
said he couldn't see it, and everybody thought, "Oh,
the poor man, the poor man." There wasn't a dry eye
in the audience.

Then he said, "Well, let me recite this other
poem." He'd never been a patriot, you see, at all.
He'd been an expatriate part of his life, and he
never supported the New Deal or anything. He was
kind of reactionary. The only poem he'd ever written

Stewart: In his whole life which had any possible application
to a thing of this sort was, you know, "The land was
ours before we were the land's.11* That's the way it
starts. So he recited that. And that was close
enough to it that he got by with it.

Then the platform started to burn up! Do you
remember that?

Riess: Yes! The platform smoking and everybody looking
down around their feet.

Stewart: Yes. And there was Carl Sandburg watching this
[laughing] in our house.

Riess: That's very funny.

Stewart: Well, that's heresy of me to say that, but that's how
it looked to me.

Frost — did I tell you about the time we took
him up to Nicasio once? Well, he was out here and
he wanted to go to a place he called Nicasha. We'd
never heard of it. Finally, Ted figured out it was
this place called Nicasio [Spanish pronunciation].
So we got him into the car and drove him up there.
It's a nice little place.

The reason he wanted to go there was that he'd
spent a summer there on vacation with his family,
with his mother, when he was, I think — either three
or five years old. He was very young anyway. And
he was nostalgic. He wanted to see the place, and
see what It was like. So we drove him up there. It
was a lovely day. He thought he recognized the general
location, but otherwise he couldn't recognize anything.
The old hotel where he'd stayed which he thought he
might remember, had burned down, so he didn't see
that. He went all around trying to find something.
He couldn't find anything. We had a nice time. The
chief thing he remembered, when he was up there, was
playing croquet with a little girl and she hit him
on the head with a mallet, practically killed him. I
suppose that's in the biographies, but maybe not.

*From The Gift Outright.

Stewart :

Bless:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Then coming back, along the Embarcadero down
there, he said, "Another boy and I stole a pig down
here one time, and carried it off. It was mostly
the other boy. He was older, but I went along." He
was a boy in San Francisco, you remember.

Yes.

You said Frost was an expatriate?

Riess:

He was for a while, literally. He was an uninvolved
man. He didn't tie in very much with what was going
on.

In this country, you mean?

Yes. Well, you know that poem, "Two Tramps in Mud
Time." That's sort of his platform.

It's funny that the Kennedys chose him, as probably
the essence of what they think of as New England.

I think it was natural enough they chose him, because
he's a great poet. He was the best figure to tie
the old and the new together. He was better than
Sandburg that way, at least if you look at it from
the outside.

Archibald MacLeish?

Well, Archibald MacLeish is my man. I would rather
have his poetry than almost any of them. But not
so many feel that way.

I'm using this word expatriate, and I'm really not
sure in what sense it's meant. For instance, when
you went to Mexico to write, were you then an
expatriate ?

Well, it's a vague term. It means a person who lives
outside the country, particularly the United States.
I don't know that it's referred, to in other countries
particularly. I wouldn't say being away for a year
would put you in that class. Although the state of
mind rather than the length of time would be what
determines it.

Well, what's the state of mind? That America's an
impossible place to get anything done in?

Stewart: Yes.

Rless: Did you know Scott Fitzgerald or Edmuond Wilson at
Princeton?

Stewart: I knew Scott Fitzgerald. I never met Edmuond Wilson,
until later. He was in the class ahead of me, and
the place was big enough even then that you didn't
know people so much outside of your own class. I
knew Scott Fitzgerald. Not well at all. We were
very different types. We wouldn't have known each
other particularly. I remember being in a couple of
small classes with him. He was a very brilliant
fellow. Of course he flunked out, along about halfway,
because he never did any work. But he came back and
got his degree, I think.

I think if I ever write my chapter on Princeton
for my autobiography, I'm going to give it the title,
"Oh Yes, I Once Saw Scotty Plain."

Riess: You once saw Scotty what?

Stewart: Plain. That's Browning's poem, "Did you once see
Shelley plain?"

Riess: In his introduction to the first series of the

Paris Review interviews, Malcolm Cowley points out
that the idea of these interviews is new. I thought
it was surprising that it didn't begin until the
fifties.

Stewart: Well, it's partly mechanical. It becomes so easy
to talk with people when you've got a machine like
this, you see. That's one big thing. So much of our
life is determined by mechanical reasons when you
come down to it. But there certainly was a lot of
interest, say, in Henry James and his craft. Nobody
could have been more interested, and written more
about it, really, than he did.

Riess: Cowley looked at all the writers interviewed and
compared them at four stages in writing. First,
getting the "germ" of the story —

Stewart: Yes. I think you have to do that, sometimes.
Riess: Now, don't be difficult about all this I [laughter]

Then there's the meditation period, and then
there's the first draft, and then there's the
revision.

Stewart: I don't know what he means by meditation; maybe I
would change some things about that second one.

Riess: Meditation is going about your normal business and
yet your mind is working and working on the idea.

Stewart: Well, that certainly is true. You certainly have to
do that. In a sense you're appraising the idea.
After all, you put a pretty big investment in a book,
and you don't want to do it unless you think this is
the book you want to do. I think that's largely it.
It's appraising. You're seeing what the difficulties
are, what the weaknesses of the whole thing are,
what it's advantages are, whether it's a book you
want to do.

And then, in most of my books, I would have to
put in another phase. After meditation comes — well,
I hate to use the term research, but that's probably
the term you'd have to use. It isn't so much research
as it is getting your material together, which may
not attain the level of actual research. It may, of
course. You can't tell. That was always a big stage
with me. Of course the meditation is an indefinite
length or period. That might run into years as far
as that's concerned. You're not really doing any
work, so that doesn't count very much, as time goes.

But the research, or the background work, on
Storm and Fire, took more time than the writing of
the book. And the same with some of my other books
too, I should say. So I would have to say that
there's a period when you have to gather Information,
gather material. I should think that would be true
of a great many writers, even if they're not writing
books which are like my books. I suppose you could
count that in as the meditation, but for almost any

Stewart: story, you've got to work up something. You don't
know everything about it. You want to know whether
they have balconies on the rooms of a hotel, or
something like that, or how the balconies are made.
Something like that, some kind of technical point you
get into. You don't want to stop — at least you
shouldn't have to stop — in the middle of writing a
book and go out and find out about things like that.
They ought to be with you already. So I say that
you would have that.

And then, of course, obviously you've got to
write the first draft. The chief differences among
writers, as you say, would come in how you go about
that. I always did a fast first draft. I wrote one
very rapidly, particularly after I got dictating
equipment. I could tear through — I've done, occasionally
as many as five, maybe six thousand words in a day,
which is very fast. At that rate you get a first draft
in a very short time, a book of ordinary length.
Because a hundred thousand words is a fairly long
novel. That's only about sixteen days at that rate!

Riess: When do you stop? Do you stop at a point where you

know exactly what the next word will be? Do you stop
at an up point or a down point?

Stewart: I would usually stop when I get tired. You get to
the point where you start skipping, and think, "Oh,
that isn't worth writing about." Then you realize
you're tired, and you quit. I never have any trouble
picking up the thread again. I pick it up immediately,
and go on. But I couldn't take more than so much,
Just from the matter of either physical or mental
weariness. As I say, if you get to the point where
it doesn't seem worthwhile, then you quit fast. That
would usually come, say, In about — when I was really
going strong I would dictate in the morning maybe
two hours and a half, and then maybe do an hour in
the afternoon. That would be working hard. Usually
I'd do less than that.

When I say five or six thousand words, that
would be a very occasional day. That's probably too
much to do, because you would be getting tired, at
least I would be getting tired. It's better to
figure that you can do two or three thousand. You
get through a book fast enough that way. And then
it makes a difference — some people don't write that

Stewart: way. Some people write very slowly and finish it
off completely. There's only one draft. I think
Cowley* oversimplified a little on that, because I
think there's more variety in the way people work.

Riess: He was noting the variety. For instance, Hemingway
went back to the start each day.

Stewart: Yes, I've heard that. I don't see how he could do
that literally. What he said was, I think, that he
read the whole manuscript over before he started
again. I don't see how he could do that literally
in a book of any length. Just wouldn't have time,
and I think you'd wear yourself out reading it over
before you picked up on the story. But that's
Hemingway, and you'd have to take his word, I suppose.

Talking about myself, I would say that I didn't
read it over very much. I'd dictate it and get the
typing back from the secretary, then I'd usually read
it over and Just correct all the gross mistakes, the
places where the secretary didn't hear the right word
and that kind of thing. I wouldn't do much more
with it, till I got the whole thing done. Then I'd
go back and do it over very carefully, several times.
I figured I would read it five times, go through it
five times, counting the first draft.

Riess: Would you pencil in changes or did you dictate again?

Stewart: I usually would not dictate again. I would get it
transcribed triple space, to leave a lot of space
to work with. I also worked at the mechanical
problem, the most difficult one, of inserting something
in the middle. I had a paper-cutter. I'd Just cut
the page straight across and then staple it with a
stapling machine. Cut the whole thing through, put
a sentence in and go on. You see. Otherwise, you'd
begin to think again, oh, it's Just too much trouble.
I can't be bothered. How can I get that sentence in?
[laughing]

You ought to take a look at some of those first
draft manuscripts in the Bancroft. Each one got to be

*I should call him Malcolm since we're good friends.

Stewart :

a mess before I got through,
different things.

Then I would work at

Hiess:
Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :
Riess:
Stewart :

In the second draft, of course, I established
the story. That's what it's going to be, when you
get through the second draft. If there are any large
things to do, you do them then. You put in a whole
page or two at one place, then you cut out a couple
of things somewhere else. You do all the big work —
new incidents, perhaps. By the time you get through
the second draft you have a pretty good set-up.

Then the third time, I went through it primarily
for details of style, wording, and details. I learned
something about myself eventually which I hadn't
realized before. My focus is not upon words but upon
structure. I will go to any pains to get the word
order properly. I don't care nearly so much about
the mot Juste. I discovered that about myself after
many years. That comes in the third and fourth times
through.

What do you mean by word order "proper?"
"proper?"

What's

Well, "proper" essentially is so that the person reads
it through without a break, so that you don't skip
back and say "What was that attached to?" The whole
thing goes right straight through.

You read your things aloud, don't you?

The fifth time I read it aloud. That was largely
focused on rhythm and the way it sounded.

•

Isn't that quite unusual?

I think it is. I don't know anybody else that ever
did that. Actually, I suppose people do.

I should think a lot of books wouldn't see the light
of day, if the author had to read them aloud.

Well, that might be a good thing.
That seems like a hard test.

Well, it's very interesting. You get things you don't
catch otherwise, you see. Usually I read it aloud to

Stewart: myself, because If you're reading to somebody else
you don't want to stop and figure it out and make
changes.

And of course another thing you have to watch
is that you can carry a great deal with your voice.
You've got to realize that this may sound all right,
but it won't go to the reader. Of course that's
pretty well worked out in the third and fourth times
over.

I found I didn't pause for words very much.
Maybe that was the reason I wasn't so much concerned
with them. But I had a good vocabulary and I was at
home in my own vocabulary. I think that's the great
thing. This person who sweats over a word doesn't
really know what he wants to say.

About that vocabulary business, I suppose I have
a very large vocabulary from my natural background,
my profession. People think I have a wonderful
memory. I'm not sure that that's the point. What I
would say about my memory is that it's under control.
It gives me what I want when I want it, a very nice
thing. I think that worked out in the vocabulary also,

What amuses me is that every now and then, even
yet, I'll use a word and realize that I never used
that word in my life before I Where do these things
come from? That's not only with me, but people in
general. You're carrying this word somewhere, and
all of a sudden it happens to be the word you want.
And you never used it before.

Riess: I was wondering about the first writing, whether you
can describe the sensation of where the words do come
from.

Stewart: Oh, well, that's Just the same way they come when you
talk. It's no different from that. I tried in my
first draft, particularly with dictating, to think of
it as talking. I didn't worry whether I got it the
way I wanted it particularly, the way I wanted it
exactly. Of course, the better you can get it the
first time, the better, but I didn't stop to do it
all that carefully. The thing is to get it out, get
it on paper, essentially.

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart ;

Hiess:

Stewart ;
Hiess:
Stewart !

Riess:
Stewart :

Well, some writers have described the sensation of
almost being dictated to themselves, as if they
were the medium.

Yes. I don't think I'd ever say that,
a figure of speech.

I guess it's

What is a nice feeling is when you come back to
your dictation that's been transcribed and you
realize, "It wasn't as bad as I thought it was!"
You feel that it really came out pretty well. That's
nice.

As far as getting the ideas, if you're a writer,
naturally you're looking for things to write abont.
Even if you're only trying to be a writer, naturally
you're looking for things. You get probably a good
many ideas. I don't think they're as rare as all
that, but you can't use them all. Some of them you
test out. This meditation, for instance, results in
throwing a good many ideas away.

This "germ" seems to be the point that organizes a
whole lot of disorganized material that's already
been around.

Yes. I think it's quite an interesting mental process,
because it does seem to come with all its parts put
together. Your mind works so fast on it that you see
the thing, a very large part of it, very quickly.

That goes back at least to Henry James. Henry
James wrote about that, about what he called I think
"the prick of the virus," whatever he meant by that.

Implying that your body has to be ready and waiting
to accept the disease?

Well, "I could write a story about that."
What do you mean by that?

I mean that's when you get the idea. "I could do
something on that. Yes."

Oh, I see what you mean.

"I could do that. That might be kind of good."

As I say, a great many of them get left by the wayside,

100

Stewart: because you don't have enough time to write them all.

Rless: In an interview once you were quoted as saying, "I
think with Emerson that a man Just has to watch for
those flashes which sometimes come to him."

Stewart: Yes. I agree with that. There is a certain point

at which these ideas come. I don't record it, because
I don't keep a diary. If I had kept a diary I would
have written down things like that. "I had this idea
today." That's the sort of thing that Emerson does.

Riess: You didn't put them in your book of dates and events.
Stewart: No.

Take a thing like Man, now, that must have come,
obviously, as an idea, one of those flashes. That's
the only way it could come. But I don't remember
when that came.

Riess: And in the writing, do ideas come up that you have
to put aside, because they're not clearly part of
whatever it is that you're working on?

Stewart: That's very difficult to answer for me. I've wondered
about that in the general way. Just what is the
difference between an idea and a finished work of
art, say? There is a difference, but Just what makes
It Is hard to say.

Of course most writers put in a lot that they
shouldn't put in, as a matter of fact; to cover up
a small amount of essential material there's a lot of
lighting the cigarette and description of the hero's
hair and eyes. That's one of the big tests of course,
whether as a writer you can transform the germ into
something that stands up on itself, which is a story
or a work of art — whatever you want to call it.

Have I used my phrase, "Don't state, demonstrate"
with you? That used to be one of my slogans when I
taught writing. That's very important. Never,
theoretically at least, never make a statement about
a character. Always show the character in action.
I think that's one of the basic things about writing
fiction. If you write, for instance, "he was a great
wit," that's useless. If you can't show him making a

101

Stewart: Joke, you'd better leave it out. You'd better make
him something else.

In the same way, stories about poets are not
very good, unless you can write the poetry for them
which you probably can't. Stories about painters
are all right. Nobody expects you to give the drawing,
or painting. There are some things you can't help
yourself on. You've got to describe the heroine.
But after all, there's nothing duller than to describe
a beautiful girl. That doesn't get you anywhere. You
have to show her in action. You have to show the
effect she has on people. That goes clear back to
the Iliad. You know that magnificent section in the
third book there where Helen comes out on the wall and
even the old men are impressed. That's a wonderful
passage. I don't think Helen's ever described. But
you know she's there, when she comes out.

Something that has interested me is the question
of what I call the motive power of a novel. That is,
what makes one thing more important than another?
You have the whole world before you. Why should you
choose to write about some things and not about others?*

Of course, I'm a plot man. I still stick by the
plot idea. The microcosm. You start from a point of
rest. (I'm getting into my course again, here.)
You pass through a period of uncertainty, and you
end on a point of rest. And there you've got a plot.
That's the way all good plotted stories, including
dramas, have to be conceived. You have to choose the
things that determine this movement, this uncertainty,
so that eventually you eliminate what is not getting
there, and you arrive at a point of rest.

*[addltional material dictated in response to a request
for expansion of this discussion, 15 March 1972]

You suggest that I have not answered the question
that I have raised about the "motive power of a novel."
I think that I really have answered it fairly well in
what I say about the plot. That is, the motive power
then becomes anything which moves the story in the
direction of the final point of rest. In a historical
novel the problem is simpler. In Ea.st of the Giants,
for instance, I placed Judith in a historical situation,
and as the known history of the period changed, she had
to adjust with it.

102

Stewart: For example, it's the old "boy meets girl" theme.
In "Romeo and Juliet," until the two of them meet,
nothing starts. It's a point of rest, with respect
to the central pair. Of course it gets fouled up a
little bit because there's the other girl there, but
nothing happens with that. Then when he sees Juliet,
off it goes. Then you don't know what's going to
happen. It goes from point to point of uncertainty,
works up, and then it works down again. At the end
everybody's dead, and that's it! You've got your point
of rest, [laughter] That's it.

Sometime I ought to start in with the first of
my novels and go right straight through.

Riess: I'd like to have you do that, yes.

There's a kind of an agreement on these Review
interviews that every author has one or two ideas that
they're trying to get across in the whole collective
works, an ideal shelf of writing.

Stewart: I wasn't thinking quite so much in those terms. I

was thinking of the technical approach. You can see
I shy off from this idea approach in a sense. This
idea of "what I was trying to do" — I don't like that
either. I think I spoke about that. I think if I
didn't do it, there's no use telling what I was
trying to do.

The problem is more difficult with a non-historical
novel. There you are obviously manipulating the story
all the time. You start with something — say, boy meets
girl. That doesn't raise any difficulties. But every
thing after that, unless you are following a sequence
of real events, becomes essentially contrived, though
that is a dirty word in writing fiction. Good fiction
merely gives the impression that the series of events
was not contrived. And it may do that extremely well,
so well indeed that you can break down and weep over
the trials of the characters. I still may not make
myself altogether clear about motive power, but I'm
not setting out right here to write a book on the
theory of fiction. [G.R.S.]

103

Riess: Okay, well, right. I won't pursue that.

Stewart: Oh, if there's anything definite you want to ask,
ask me. That's all right.

Riess: Would you agree that in your writing there are one
or two main ideas, and that everything is part of a
big package? And, is there more to the package, in
your mind, of your collective works? Or, as far as
getting your idea across, is your "shelf full?

Stewart: Well, I've been thinking a little bit about that
since I've been talking with you. I think I said
here earlier that the idea of simplicity was a big
idea in my books. And you brought up the idea of the
ecology, and that certainly is true. I'd go along
with you on that. That's been very important.

I think, in a sense, the weakness of my work,
looked upon as a whole, is that it doesn't lead from
one thing to another. The books tend to be very much
discrete. That's the way I like them, though, that's
what gave me vigor and energy to go ahead. I couldn't
possibly have done the sort of thing that some authors
have done — a series of linked novels over the years.
I would have bored myself sick.

Riess: What about Faulkner?

Stewart: Well, Faulkner. He didn't tie up so much — he had a
center, but he didn't tie the books up together too
much. There have been others of course that stuck
to the same topic. Many writers have stuck to at
least a style. I mean, when you talk about Hardy, oh,
you think about a certain type of writing. His works
stick together. Even Dickens sticks together after
a sense. You know pretty much what a Dickens novel
is going to be. They are variations on a theme. And.
the Forsvthe Saga. That sort of thing, where you get
at least a large number of volumes tied up in one
theme .

Riess: And you admire this?

Stewart: Not tremendously, no. Obviously there have been some
great works done that way.

Riess: You did say in the beginning that that was what you
did enjoy about writing. Each thing was discrete.

Stewart:

Rless:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart:

Rless:

Stewart:

Rless:

Stewart:
Rless:
Stewart :

Rless:

Stewart :
Rless:

Stewart :

It was.

So your regret must not be too Intense I

No, no. My regret Is not Intense. In fact, I wouldn't
say It's a regret at all. As I said, It's a weakness
in the picture. Again, "I have paid my price...."

I see. That's your critical self that's looking.

Well, perhaps I'm looking from other people's point
of view more than that, because it's very hard for a
reader to follow me all the way through. I lose them
someplace.

A lot of your fan mail is people discovering that "you
are the same George Stewart who wrote..."

That's amusing, pleasing, as a matter of fact,
being all sorts of things. Most people do.

I like

One of the writers interviewed (Simenon) said that he
wrote essentially for himself and to live through
the excitement of the writing. If nobody ever read
the book it wouldn't matter.

Yes. Well, there are all kinds of people.
You write books for people to read.

Yes. I don't think I would be much interested in
writing them merely for myself. And I don't quite
see how he writes a book without knowing how it's
going to turn out. It seems to me that he's cheating
himself in there somewhere.

Shall I go on with this, or is It annoying to have
all these quotes?

Oh, go ahead. I'm interested in seeing what you have,

Well, Cowley talked about the tricks to start off
work, pencil sharpening, walking, reading the Bible
[laughter]. I know you sharpen pencils. Do you have
other kinds of things to get the motor going?

I didn't have any of that, actually. (You don't use
pencils for dictating.) I Just sat down and started.
I guess sitting down was the preparation [laughing].

105

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

Stewart: Even lying down. I like to dictate lying down, or
at least reclining, like this. I find it easier,
didn't need to go through any of those things. I
always started out right away on the novel. Self-
starter.

Again, it was partly the fact that writing was
always a kind of escape for me, because I had so
much university work to do. Writing was a way of
getting away from it.

These people felt that a lot is luck. If they don't
do the right things, the luck won't come.

Do some of them have that idea?

Truman Capote sounded, like he was under some sort of
mounting apprehension, that If he didn't have his
desk arranged Just so, etc...

Yes, he might well be. I think probably a good many
writers have little quirks like that. C. S. Forester,
for instance. He wrote on the same kind of paper,
lined paper, every time. He was the kind who "hated
to write." At least he always said he did. I'm
never quite sure about people like that. But he was
a thoroughly professional writer. Absolutely
professional. The way he fooled himself was he'd
have this paper, the same size always, the same number
of lines, and he had to fill a certain number of pages
every day. Then he wouldn't do any more. He'd come
to the end of a page, in the middle of a sentence,
and stop right there. He didn't allow any paragraphs.
He would put a sign in for a paragraph, not a space,
so that it didn't make any difference. He found that
otherwise he cheated on paragraphs. He would put in
too many paragraphs. That got to be a kind of fetish
I suppose. That was the way he worked it.

Hemingway, after one of his accidents, where there
was a possibility he would lose the use of his arm,
didn't think he'd be able to write any more, because
for him it was such a manual activity.

I don't think that would apply to me. I always like
to have as little barrier as possible between myself
and what was on the page. The way I could get it
there with the least expenditure of time and energy
was what I wanted.

Riess:

Stewart

106

Riess: What about the idea of the "demon" that's in charge,
and about people who felt that they were sort of a
medium?

Stewart: Well, I don't think I would go for that. But of
course, as I say, it's always a question of what
makes you write at all.

Riess: If you hadn't written, what would you have done that
would have used that same part of you that writes?

Stewart: I'd have done research.

(Interruption)

[Apropos of comments on Paris Review interview with
Thornton Wilder]

Stewart: I was writing this chapter about my high school time,
when I played on the tennis team. This is written
up in the high school annual, you know the kind of
thing they have, that little thing about the tennis
season. It turns out, as I remember very well, I
went to a tournament at the Thatcher School. After
beating one man, I was eliminated by the second man
to come up — I wasn't a very good player — and his name
was Wilder. That was undoubtedly Thornton Wilder,
who was at Thatcher School at that time. I haven't
checked up to see whether it possibly could have been
another Wilder, but I don't think it was. That's
quite a nice little story, at least it amused me.

His name Just happened to be preserved in this
annual. Obviously I wouldn't have remember it. I
had no reason to remember his name way back then.
It tickles me, because there's a literary contact!
That's why I put that in my autobiography, [laughter]

I like Wilder 's work very much, too. He has also
the quality I have had of not writing about the same
things. His collected works don't make any kind of
unification at all, as far as I can see.

10?

INTERVIEW V, Bret Harte. Ordeal by Hunger. John
Phoenix, East of the Giants. Doctor's Oral. Take Your
Bible in Your Hand. Storm; some comments about
publishers interspersed. (Recorded September 28, 1971)

Riess: I read the latest two chapters of your autobiography
and in them you check mark a couple of questions.

Stewart: Yes, places where I hadn't really got finished, or
hadn't checked something out.

Riess: You put a question mark next to the comment, "Stewart
as second man is a sure and steady player, while not
at all spectacular."

Stewart: Yes, I Just wanted to check the reference. I didn't
have it with me when I was dictating that, and I just
put that in as I remembered it. So that's Just to
check a reference.

Riess: Do you think that was a pretty intuitive remark of
whoever the editor was, of that yearbook?

Stewart: No, I don't know if it was. I had probably written
that myself! [laughter] You know the way student
things are written up? I don't really know, but I
have a suspicion I may have written that, or given
the idea at least. It's the picture I might have
presented of myself.

Riess: You suggested going through all of your work and

talking about what you were trying to do. Are you
ready to start on that?

Stewart: Yes, I might as well say something about that, if
you think that's a good idea.

108

Stewart: It will take me quite a while, probably, although
I'll talk pretty fast and not too much in detail.
I'll pass over my thesis and the little book I did
on versification. The Bret Harte book I think you'd
call my first book. I'd worked several years getting
material on that, and it went into shape pretty
easily. That was a period that was going in for
biography. Strachey had popularized biography as a
form of writing in the twenties.

There was a type of biography into which mine
falls to some extent. I don't mean the debunking kind
particularly. That was another pattern of the time,
the debunking biography, in which there were no more
heroes left. I didn't take a hero apart, but at least
I tried to give him a place as a human being. I think
I did that too.

I wrote the book mostly in Prance, the year we
were there. I wrote it in longhand, in pencil, the
first draft of it. It gave me no particular trouble,
I might say. Before I left the United States I had
read several biographies with the idea of seeing how
people handled them, what you could do, and what you
couldn't do. I had no particular difficulty. I kept
a chronological development, which I think is the
right thing to keep if you possibly can when you're
writing, because it gives you a pattern. It gives
a natural pattern, because reading itself follows
ahead on a line, and chronology does the same thing.
It's the easiest of all structures and I think the
most effective.

Of course chronology can be mired up a great
deal, and complicated, but I think the simpler form
has a lot of it.

Riess: You're talking about biography?

Stewart: No, novels too, as far as that's concerned. On the
whole, I think the Bret Harte biography came out all
right. It had very good reviews. I think it surprised
a lot of people that I was able to do so well. That
was my first book, although I was not so very young
when I wrote it. I was about 35. You see, I didn't
get off to a particularly young start. I've done a
lot of writing, but it's come late.

109

Stewart: I read some of the book a while ago. I do that
every now and then with my books, get started on
them for some reason or other and re-read parts of
them. Usually I'm rather pleased that they read as
well as they do. That one also. That one's not
badly written, and not badly constructed, either.
I think it shows a good deal of maturity of mind,
really, to be able to treat a man like that sympathet
ically, a man who had been attacked very badly, and
had certain weaknesses of character, no question about
that. But still, I think I hit the line pretty well
between heroism and anti -heroism. I think I showed
him as a human being, which of course he was.

Riess: Why did you pick him? Did you write it because you
wished to change the image somewhat?

Stewart: No, not particularly. I should say it was largely,
I suppose, academic opportunism, to use that term,
[laughing] After all, you want to write something.
I had done a lot of work on the California background,
and I had planned on doing a very big Job on a kind
of social-cultural history of the Gold Rush period.
That seemed to be getting too big for me, and taking
me too far away, so I finally scrapped that and saved
Bret Harte out of it.

I'd written an article on Bret Harte a long time
before that, so I had worked into him that way. It
seemed an interesting thing to work on, and not too
big. It could be handled. And he was a man who
needed doing; there was no biography of him that was
good, and hasn't been one since mine. I've held the
field so far. That is largely because nobody is much
interested in Bret Harte any more.

If you have any question, you Just — I don't like
to stop and say "question, please" or anything,
[laughing]

Riess: When you say that you had gotten "too far away" in
the other writing project, what do you mean?

Stewart: It was too big a Job, and I Just didn't want to spend
all my life doing that particular Job— especially
because it was rather peripheral to literature.

Riess: How does the phrase "publish or perish" fit into this?

110

Stewart: Oh yes. Yes, that had something to do with it.
Although that phrase Is not so much an absolute.
Quite a few people have neither published nor
perished when you come right down to it.

Riess: When the reviews came in, they were very favorable.

Stewart: They were very good, yes. Extremely good. They

surprised me very much as a matter of fact — how much
attention the book got, and how good the reviews
were. Of course my bad luck held. I hit the very
worst of the depression, when the book came out; it
sold very little. The publishers wanted to renege
on the contract at the last moment, they were so close
to being broke apparently. I insisted on going ahead
with the contract, because after all it meant a great
deal to me to get the book out.

Riess: You were a good businessman in these ventures, it
seems to me.

Stewart: No, I don't think so, particularly.

Riess: It didn't seem like you gave your publishers any
quarter, in your letters.

Stewart: Are you referring to a particular letter?

Riess: Not any particular letter, but you were dealing pretty
strongly for yourself and at times when I might
imagine your saying, "Oh well, let so and so take
care of it," you were always involved.

Stewart: Well, I wouldn't say I was particularly a good

businessman in dealing with publishers. I had several
fights. I think any author does.

Riess: But you fought the fights. Isn't it easier Just to
give in?

Stewart: Well, it might be. That isn't necessarily good

business though. It might be better business to go
ahead and play it the other way.

Riess: The involvement with publishers is Interesting. I'm
thinking of some authors' relations with Maxwell
Perkins and Soribners.

Ill

Stewart: Did I tell you about my relationship with Maxwell
Perkins?

Riess: No. I know from your letters he was interested in
you.

Stewart: Yes, in about 1938, '39. That's an interesting
story.

I think this relationship between author and
publisher has changed very much with time. I don't
think there is such a thing much any more. Of course
I'm not active enough in writing to know too much
about it. But I think it's almost disappeared. I
think it probably was even stronger before my time.

Perkins was one of the famous examples. In
fact, I'd call him an editor more than a publisher.
There's a difference there. Of course he must have
been very powerful with the publishers too. I think
that editorship is largely dead now too. They don't
have the same kind of relationship with their authors,
I should Judge. Of course if a man's making a lot
of money, they'll pay much more attention to him than
they will to the ordinary person. I think there's
much less taking a young author and bringing him
along than there used to be.

Perkins got interested in my first novel, East
of the Giants. He wanted to take me over, almost
literally. I wasn't under contract to any publisher.
In fact he sent a man all the way out here from New
York, which impressed me no end, in those days! I
can't remember the man's name, but I think he's still
with Scrlbners. He must be a very senior man by now.
In fact, he must be retired.

Anyway, he came all the way out to see me, just
trying to get me to go in with them. I would work
with Perkins and then he would bring me along. If
I'd been a good businessman that's what I would have
done. That's exactly a business relationship. He
would have probably handled it all right. He wanted
me to write Western novels, like East of the Giants,
Western novels at the literary level. And that was
a very smart thing to do probably, probably have been
a lot of money in that. I could have written a whole
series, and had my life work laid out for me. I

112

Stewart: would have been Maxwell Perkins* boy, and he would
have brought me along. He would undoubtedly have
taught me a lot. It might have been quite an
experience.

Riess: Taught you a lot — how?

Stewart: Taught me how to write Western novels. That was

his forte, you see, getting somebody like that who
was fairly young and who had possibilities.

Riess: I think of people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald,
prlma donnas, being handled by Perkins.

Stewart: I don't know how he handled them. You might say he
didn't make a very good Job with either of them,
because they both were very temperamental writers.
Fitzgerald particularly went to pieces, you see. He
went out of the picture. He didn't live very long.
He threw himself away pretty much.

I don't know whether that's what Perkins had in
mind or not. I rejected this in high dudgeon. I
went to see him when I was in New York later and had
a very nice talk with him. I told him I thought that
was a bad idea to do that sort of thing, and he said,
"Let's not talk about that." So we had a nice talk
about other things. I was very glad to have met him.
At that time, you see, I was getting started on Storm,
and while it might be called a Western novel in some
respects, it is something rather different on the
whole. I didn't want to stop working on that.

I couldn't have done it anyway. I just couldn't
have that relationship to a man. If I had been a
very young man, I might have done it. After all, it
wouldn't mean that I tied, up for the rest of my life
necessarily. If I had been very young and inexperienced
but I'd written say one good book, it might have been
a good thing to do. Because a relationship with an
older man who really knew the business would have
been very — well, profitable in money and useful to
the development of whatever you had in you. But that
never happened.

Another piece of bad luck that I had, that was
really, I think, major bad luck —

113

Riess: Why do you say another? You're actually considering
that your decision —

Stewart: No, I guess I shouldn't say that. (I was thinking

about bad luck. I raised the question I had bad luck
in my autobiography, bad luck professionally speaking.
I was referring to that, not to the Perkins business.)

Now I can't think what the bad luck was that I
had! What I was talking about. I don't very often
have a lapse like that, but I can't think of it right
now. I'll go on to something else.

Well, I know now. That was the fact — you see,
I was going to work on Ordeal by Hunger « which is
another book I can take up. That was definitely a
revolt against the University, because I had done
quite a lot of work, publication of all sorts, and I
hadn't gotten a promotion. I was still assistant
professor. And I was getting pretty sore. I figured,
well, what's the difference. There's no use publishing
any more scholarly works. I might as well do something
that would be fun to do. Here's a great story. I
knew enough about it, as a matter of fact I thought it
would be a much easier Job than it was, because I
thought the material had all been pretty well collected,
in a previous book or two, and that I could work out
from that.

But I found that was wrong. I had to do the work
really from the bottom up, which now I would know I
would have to do, but then I thought I could do it in
an easier way. Anyway, I did the work, I collected
the material. That book came out very well too.
That's been a quite well -sustained book ever since.
It's been in print most of that time (first published
in 1936), and that's pretty hard to do. Where I had
my bad luck was in this. I thought I should work
with an agent, so I did. I tied up with a good agent,
Brandt and Brandt. They're still going. They've been
leading agents for many years. I was quite pleased
they wanted to take the book.

Well, they sent it around, to six different
publishers, all of whom turned it down. And they
were good publishers. That's very discouraging when
that happens. I couldn't see why, because I thought

Stewart: it was a safe book at least. I didn't see how a

publisher could help but make some money out of it,
but they couldn't see it that way. Of course the
depression was on.

So the agents sent it back to me. I sent it
out to Henry Holt. The first publisher I sent it to
took it, which has made me very sour on agents ever
since. If they couldn't do better than that...

Where I had the back luck was really in this,
that neither the agents nor I sent that book to
Alfred Knopf. It was a book made to order for Alfred
Knopf. He told me later he would have been very glad
to take it. In my period, Knopf has been about the
greatest publisher there is. If I could have tied
up with Knopf at that time, I think it would have been
a very fine relationship. He's a difficult character,
you know, but he's a great publisher. He could
respect good writing, in a way that very few people
can. He could maintain a literary standard — as very
few people have ever done in this country.

Well, they didn't send it to him. I don't know
why. They might have disliked him personally. I
think it sometimes works that way.

Riess: Would he have directed you in the way that Perkins
might have?

Stewart: No, I don't think, at all. I think he would have
been very good for general advice and that sort of
thing. I don't think he would have tried to direct
an author too much. That would be my feeling. I've
met him several times. He can be a disagreeable man,
but a great publisher. Of course his wife was a great
character too, you know. She's dead now. She was
probably as great a publisher as he was.

Riess: Was she a publisher in her own right?

Stewart: No, her name wasn't on the masthead anywhere, I don't
believe, but everybody knew about her in the book
business.

Riess: When you talk about him being a great publisher, that
means a great discoverer, or something?

115

Stewart: Well, that's part of it, certainly, and maybe being
a man of high ideals who at the same time can keep
going. I mean, after all, a publisher's got to keep
going. He's got to make money or he's dead. There's
no use being impractical about this thing. Knopf
can do that. He can do both sides.

For instance, he brought up the standard of the
physical nature of the book tremendously in this
country, for one thing. That shows — you compare what
a book looked like before, say, 1920, with what it
gradually came to look like. Beautifully designed
books, well put together. I think there is more owed
to Alfred Knopf than anybody else for that. But I
missed that connection.

Riess: Books got nicer. Why?

Stewart: I think it (was perhaps Knopf's realization that after
all a good-looking well-designed book doesn't cost
much more than a sloppy book. All you have to do
is get an intelligent designer working on it. What
you pay the designer isn't a very big item in bringing
a book out.

Riess: When you realized that you had missed the boat on
that, was it possible to get back with him?

Stewart: Well, no. It was quite a while before I realized
that. And I didn't know too much about the whole
set-up in those days, or I would have sent the book
to him at that time. No, it was quite a while, and
I had gone too far in other directions to switch
arfcund. I may be idealizing that situation, but
that's the way it seems to me.

Riess: Did you use original sources, and interview people,
for the Bret Harte book?

Stewart: Many original sources and a few people. His sister
was still living, living in Berkeley as a matter of
fact. She was a lovely old lady. I didn't get much
out of her. She gave me a diary, though, which I
made use of, very important use of. And I interviewed
Ina Goolbrith, the poet. I didn't get much out of
her either.

I met his daughter once, but that was after I'd
written the biography. I didn't particularly like to

116

Stewart: team up with the family. Unless you do a real family
biography, my instinct is to keep away from the
family. I think that's a good instinct.

Riess: How about in Ordeal by Hunger?

Stewart: I didn't get any interviews there. There was only
one survivor left, and again — that's a kind of a
family matter, and if you go to somebody like that,
sometimes what they tell you you know isn't right,
but you can't very well dispute them. I kept away
from the families too. I missed out on some little
things there, but I kept my freedom of action, which
is very important in that story, because each family
had its own version of it afterward, you know, that was
sort of entrenched. If you got what a granddaughter
was telling you, why, you wouldn't know what you had.
I missed out on some small documents.

There's been quite a bit come to light on the
Donner Party since I worked on it, but I've incorporated
most of that in my revised edition.

Riess: You said you thought you would be able to find most
of the material in published work. Was there very
much on the actual trails and maps of routes, or was
that what you had to develop yourself?

Stewart: I developed most of that myself. I did go over a lot
of that territory on foot, so I knew about where they
went, and where they could go and where they couldn't.

Yes. I worked out practically all of that, the
geographical background. Of course that's where I got
interested in the trail. I've still got that interest.

I actually located a couple of the old trees up
there which were cut in the snow and they were still
standing. They're still up there, by the way. I
saved them, finally, because the road was re-located
and here were these old stumps standing right beside
the highway. It would be Just a matter of time before
somebody went and knocked them over, Just for fun. So
I told the Donner Park people they ought to go out
and retrieve these stumps, because they're the size
you could get on a truck with a few men lifting them.
They've got them up there in the museum now. I don't
think they have them on exhibition yet, but they've

117

Stewart: r;ot them. And that's quite a find to have. These

were cut off about ten feet high, about when the snow
was deepest. They came from the Prosser Creek camp.

My destiny tied me up to Dormer Pass. I kept
going back to that for one thing after another.
Finally they had a ceremony up there when they were
dedicating the new museum, and they gave me Donner
Pass! They decided to give me Donner Pass, that
would be my property from now on. [laughter] But
I said it would Just get me on the tax rolls, I
wouldn't take it. They said, "Well, we'll grant it
tax free." I said, "Then I'll take it."

I found out they hadn't given me anything, because
Donner Pass is really a hole in the wall. What did I
get? Just what? Something where nothing was.

Riess: How about the "germ of the idea" on Ordeal ?

Stewart: A long time back, about 1920, I read McGlasham's book
on the Donner Party. It was a good story, but badly
told. I was interested ever since that. Of course
I didn't think of myself as a historian. It wasn't
until I branched out and got away from the work in
literature a little and, as I told you, got the feeling
that I might as well do something in another line since
I'd done enough in that one line already.

One thing about that book that most people don't
realize is just what a complicated story it is. It's
a much more complicated story than you'd ever try to
do in a novel, because you've got as many as five or
six strands running parallel, and you have to keep
shifting back from one to another, or carrying one
through — that's the most difficult thing there is to
write, you know. When things are happening at the
same time, and you have to keep the whole thing in
the reader's mind some way or another. That called
for a terrific amount of work.

Riess: How did you plot that before you wrote it?
Stewart: I drew lines on paper.
Riess: You really plotted it?

Stewart: Oh yes, sort of figuring how to get back, onto the
other, how to bridge something across, and work the

•

118

Stewart: reader's mind around until he gets to thinking about
the other thing, and then In the next chapter you're
back on to another thing, you know, but you've got
him already thinking about it.

Riess: It sounds like you're talking about keeping the

reader's attention in a way that wouldn't be usual
in nonf lotion.

Stewart: That's all right in nonf let ion. I don't see any

reason why you shouldn't keep the reader's attention
in nonf lotion, [laughing]

Riess: It seems as if in nonf lotion you would assume that
the reader would work harder than In fiction.

Stewart: Well, probably he does, but even so you oan't count

on him working very hard. I don't see why you should
make him work hard anyway, if you can do the work
yourself.

Riess: When you realized what a difficult thing it was going
to be, did you at any point feel like, "Well, let's
scrap the idea."

Stewart: No, I never thought of it that way. I knew where the
material was by that time. Well, that was an
interesting thing to do.

Riess: Did you get much editing help on that from your
publishers?

Stewart: Holt published that and I don't think there was any
editing at all.

Riess: At the point at which you would read something aloud,
for instance to your wife or to yourself, were there
apt to be any changes happening then?

Stewart: Oh yes, yes, if there was something that didn't go
right, and if I read it to myself I would fix it
right there. If I was reading to somebody else, I
might just mark it in the margin and. go on.

Riess: Did you have really beautiful sentences that would

occur to you that you would put down, or did beautiful
sentences develop slowly?

119

Stewart

Bless:

Oh, I think that lying In bed at night, why you may
write up something, might do a little writing. I
donft think of beautiful sentences In Isolation
though. I think the whole thing has to tie In. A
sentence Is beautiful because it stands In relation
ship to other things. You want to watch that kind
of thing — that's what lead you Into purple passages,
when you start thinking of some particular sentence.

I know when I was writing my first novel, East
of the Giants. I used to lie in bed at night and
really be all excited because I was thinking about
how things would go, what I could do. Sometimes a
particular word. And every now and then, of course,
you do get a particular sentence or idea. Sometimes
it works. I can't think of an example right now, but
I know I have had that sort of thing.

Another funny thing is when you get to quoting
yourself in later books. That's a danger, of course,
that you start imitating yourself. I wanted to use
this quotation in California Trail, and it was a fine
quotation. I could quote it all right and I knew it
was in one of my books somewhere, [laughing] I had
to hunt all around before I could find it. I finally
found it in Fire. "All this, too, was part of the

price of the taking-over of the land."
sentence. That's got rhythm too.*

It's a nice

One great test of whether you're writing purple,
or whether you're not, is whether you're saying some
thing, whether you're saying exactly what you want.
If you find you're throwing in adjectives or something
and you're not really saying anything then you've got
to watch out. That's when you're getting bad.

But you know, that sentence I Just quoted is very
exactly worded. It doesn't say it was the price. It
was "part of the price." That kind of thing, you see,
that says something quite exactly.

What was the response of the public to Ordeal? Who

were you writing for at this point? Who was your public?

*But be sure that you keep the hyphen in "taking-over."
It makes a big difference. [G.S.]

•

120

Stewart: Well, my public has always been the intelligent lay
person, I suppose you could say. My books are not
written for specialists. Don't you think that
describes pretty much what my books are written for?

Riess: Ordeal by Hunger wasn't necessarily for people who
were Just getting interested in California and
California things?

Stewart: Well, it's partly that, of course. Any book has an
area of specialization. A book about young people
will sell more to young people than it will to older
people. That doesn't mean it's really exclusively
for young people. Any book has a certain degree of
specialization.

For instance, Ordeal by Hunger sells well every
year in Reno. I suppose mostly to tourists going
through. The jobber up there in Reno was in tears
when it wasn't in print. He wrote to the publisher
and told him it would sell, I think, 30,000 copies
a year. That's a lot of books, paperbacks of course.

Rless: After Ordeal came your decision to do the novel.

Stewart: Well, we might mention John Phoenix in there. He
gets passed over too much". That was a mistake in
some ways, of course, but I'd done a biography, and
I felt, "I've done a biography, I'd like to do another."
I was interested in Phoenix for a long time. I
thought he wrote pretty funny, humorous stuff about
California. The way it was a mistake is it's a
mistake always to follow up a thing you've done,
really, with something that's the same. I think,
that's my general philosophy.

And then also, Phoenix was not a man of enough
importance. It's just about as much work to write a
biography of an unimportant man as it is with a big
man, and you're wasting your time pretty much. I was,
on him. Although it's a good book. It's a readable
book. It certainly hasn't ever sold very much,
although it's back in print now. Everything's in
print now, practically, so that doesn't mean so much.

And then I got magnificent family support on
that. They sent me all the -family papers, which were
extraordinary, including a whole album of drawings
he made. That was fun to work at. But that's the

121

Stewart: only time I ever got close to getting in trouble with
a family. That's always a danger, but it blew over.
It wasn't any real trouble. There was one sentence
in the book that they objected to. Fortunately, I
guess it was fortunately, the publisher changed it
without even telling me. It didn't make any great
difference. That is a good little book. It's not
a book I'm ashamed of at all, although it wasn't very
earth-shaking in its topic.

Then I did decide to write the novel. People
asked me why I wrote a novel, but after all, it's
a great American ambition. Everybody wants to write
a novel, and so I did too. I already knew something
about early California, because I'd been interested
in that — it's a very colorful era, and that was a
period of historical novels. Historical novels are
always popular, but they're more popular at some
times. This was the period of Anthony Adverse and
Gone With the Wind. And the influence of those books
is in there of course, to some extent. It was, in a
sense, a period piece.

I learned a lot out of writing East of the Giants.
It came out very well. I had learned about point of
view, and about continuity and things like that from
working on books I had already done, particularly
Ordeal by Hunger. So I didn't have much trouble with
writing a novel. My imagination worked tremendously
well on that, I suppose because it was my first novel,
and I was eager.

The book worked all right. Structurally, the
novel is in three books. I used the device of inter-
chapters, which I've used a lot, starting with Ordeal
by Hunger. It trademarks my work, almost. I don't
know any older writer who even uses the term. I
think maybe I invented the term. So East of the
Giants was three books.

The books were in a comparatively brief period
of time; then the inter-chapters filled in the gaps.
The first book began in 1837, the second, in 18&J-,
and the third in 1856.

You see, you have the problem of scene and
summary in writing almost anything. There are certain
places you have to develop in detail: they are your
scenes. And of course, if you can't write good scenes,

122

Stewart: you can't write a good novel. You've got to come

to grips with your material at some point or other.

I always used, to teach that, about scene
flinching. It's a curious phenomenon. You'll find
it time and again. Inexperienced writers will work
up to a big scene, and then they won't write it! They
flinch. They realize it's going to be hard to write,
and subconsciously they don't want to write it. And
of course that ruins your book. When you get up to
a big scene, you've got to tackle it, you've got to
do it.

Writing good summary is difficult too. But I
solved the problem — somewhat mechanically, I grant
you, in East of the Giants, because I wasn't too
skilled. That is a little stiff. Each chapter is
written from one person's point of view, though the
same person may have more than one chapter. Each
chapter is a scene, really. That is, it means a very
restricted time basis, often Just a matter of a few
hours, and sometimes a few days, but just about like
that.

It's built up around the heroine, and she has
about half the scenes, that is, chapters. And of
course her two husbands, because she's married twice,
have chapters. Once or twice her children have
chapters, and other times incidental characters, who
give a different point of view on the main characters.
It worked out pretty well.

Curiously Josephine Miles was a great admirer
of that book. It doesn't seem like her book, somehow
or other, but she always liked it. And some of the
inter- chapters are very good. I've got an inter-
chapter in there, which, if I ever collected my
anthology, I'd certainly take. It's one of the best
things I ever did.

Bless: Tell me which.

Stewart: Well, it's the one between the first and second books.
It's the rhythm of the year at the ranch where she
lived. "This was the cycle of the year at Rancho

123

Stewart: Amarillo," I think it reads, and Just goes through
the year.* I haven't road it in a long time, but I
think it's very Rood.

Riess: Your heroine, Judith, was much admired by readers.

Stewart: I don't know where she came from particularly. My
wife thinks she's got a lot of my mother in her.
That may well be. I didn't have anybody really
definitely in mind, though I never have, on any major
character in my books.

Hiess: She changed so and grew, in the book.

Stewart: Well, she grew against a background, too. The back
ground changed and she changed, partly from maturity,
and partly because she had to change to adjust to new
situations, as people had to in that generation.

Riess: Did you work with a chronological outline there?

Stewart: Well, I had some kind of outline, yes. I knew pretty
well where I was going. The third part gave me some
trouble. The first two parts ran beautifully from
the original impulse. The third part gave me some
trouble to develop.

Riess: The third part being the last part. You did, in

speaking of Earth Abides « say that the beginning and
the end are usually —

*"This was the cycle of the year at Rancho Amarillo.
By July, after killing-time, the grass was dry and
brown. That was a good time to dry adobe bricks in
the sun and to build, for the cattle needed little
care. By August the cattle were eating the brown
grass close down to the ground, and were getting thin.
The creek shrank to a series of muddy water-holes.
In September came hot, dazzling, sunny weather, with
sweeping dry winds from the north, making the lips
crack and wearing the nerves thin too. That was a
dangerous time, and there might be quarrels and
knifings among the vaqueros. By now the hides were
cured, and great high-loaded bullock-carts creaked
slowly off toward the boat-landing on the bay-shore;
later they would return with the winter supplies,
corn and beans, chiles and onions, from San Jose.

•

Stewart: They're usually easier, yes. But It wasn't that way
In that particular book. Well, I wouldn't say the
third book gave me very great difficulty. You see,
it's the breakdown of the primitive paradise. I
didn't think of it in terms as self-conscious as
that, but that's pretty much what it is. That
required a readjustment. You had to bring in evil
in the last part. There wasn't much real evil in
the first part.

Riess: After East of the Giants, you were a "novelist."
How were you received around campus? You told in
the autobiography about being carried on the
shoulders of the crowd in high school. Now were
you back up on the shoulders?

Stewart: Yes, I think that partly describes it, all right.

There was a good deal of that, but it came to me by
steps. I got quite a good deal out of Bret Harte
that way. And I got quite a good deal out of Ordeal
by Hunger. It seemed to move on to another step.
And then East of the Giants was another step. And
then I suppose Storm was the final step. Simplifying
the matter. But that's about the way it went, I
guess.

Riess: If there had been a real lack of Interest in you as
a writer, would you have been motivated to go on
anyway?

"In October or November came the first good rain.
The tension of the dry weather eased and you slept
better. Within two weeks afterwards you would look
out one morning and see, faint and delicate, the first
green of the new grass. In December and on until
March came the great storms, sweeping in over the
southern hills beneath immeasurable thickness of murky
gray cloud, low-lying and wind-driven. The creek rose
till you could hear it roaring in the night. Between
the great storms came fine weeks of sunny weather,
warm in the day, crisp cold at night. Once in a while
you would look out in the morning to see the whole
valley aglitter like silver with frost, and the
cattle standing out darkly, steaming in the newly
risen sun. With the cold and the wet, and the new
grass not yet having much nourishment, the cattle
were still thinner."

125

Stewart: I don't know. I think it would have been doubtful,
yes. Because I think that what psychologists some
times term as feedback is very important to a writer,
as I've already mentioned. I think that lack of it
leads many writers into frustration. They start out
and they don't get anything coming back in, and then
they Just... of course in the first place they almost
immediately hit a very bad problem about publishing.
If they can't get some kind of reaction from somebody,
then pretty soon they develop the idea that they're
misunderstood geniuses and so forth, and that's bad.

I knew one man. I think he's dead now. He wrote
nine novels and piled them up one after the other.
He had published a novel way back about 1925, which
was fairly successful. Then he couldn't ever hit it.
Nine different novels, and he didn't r>ubllsh any of
them. Then finally some publisher took another one
or two of them years later. But that was all he ever
did. I don't know how many more novels he's written
in his time. But that's a very curious kind of person.
And he was a very curious kind of person. I think
writing novels that way would be too much for me.

Riess: Yes. That's like Simenon's need to write, and
experience his own life through writing.

Stewart: Well, I can conceive that taking place, but it's
certainly not very common.

I think there has to be some kind of compromise
on this. I think if you start writing entirely for
other people that's pretty bad too. That gives you
the hack writer, who can be a skillful writer, but I
think that's not good either. You have to have some
kind of compromise between writing to please yourself
and writing for an audience.

Riess: By then, on campus, was It, "There goes George
Stewart, the novelist11?

Stewart: Oh, I wasn't conscious of that very much. I suppose
there was some of that. Every now and then I would
meet somebody who said, "Oh, I took a class from you
because I read your books" and so forth. But I was
never very conscious of that. Berkeley is a very

126

Stewart: sophisticated place. We've had a lot of books

published around Berkeley. They don't go into swoons
about a writer too easily.

You get quiet pieces of appreciation which are
worth more to you than the other thing. I don't know
whether you knew the Tolmans or not. Kathleen Tolman
said that reading East of the Giants opened up a whole
world for her. That's nice to get from a very fine
person you've known for years, somebody like that.
That's nice.

Riess: Did you ever develop a character again as you did in
East of the Giants?

Stewart: Well, yes. I think I did some other good characters.
Of course Storm and Fire don't go in for human
characters particularly, but I think that I've got
some good characters in Earth Abides. People generally
recognize those. There are good characters in the
Years of the City too, but nobody ever reads that, so
nobody knows about that. I think the Pounder in there
is a very good character. That again breaks up — that's
four different periods, you see, connected through
the family chronologically, so in a sense you don't
get the same chance to — there are four main characters.
Well, let's go on chronologically before we get into
that.

Riess: How did you get started on Doctor's Oral?

Stewart: In a way, that was a kind of in-between book. It was
down in Mexico, and I wrote East of the Giants so fast
I got finished with it about March and we were all
fixed up to stay down in Mexico until about May, and
here was all this nice time available down there with
nothing to fill me up particularly. I had this idea,
kind of an obvious thing — oh, I don't know whether
it's obvious or not, nobody else has done it, I think —
the idea of a contest, a struggle, in an examination.
Have you read that one?

Riess: Yes, I have.

Stewart: Well there, you see, I went at the question of scene
differently. That's all handled in scenes. The

whole thing takes place in about eighteen hours,
can run through it, and it's all in scene.

You

12?

Riess: Scene means, then, a lot of dialog.

Stewart: Yes, a lot of dialog, and the thing done in detail.
It might be put on the stage. Of course the drama
is all done in scene. It has to be. And the great
difficulty with stage drame is getting these
transitions in. They have to use all sorts of devices
to let the audience know what happened between this
scene and that scene. In the novel you have the
advantage of working both ways. So, by scene, you
mean something which could be put on the stage without
too much difficulty.

As a matter of fact, two people have dramatized
Doctor's Oral. I've got one of their versions in the
Bancroft collection.

Riess: "The Gods and Joe Grantland.11
Stewart: Yes. It wasn't a good Job at all.

Riess: So the theme, when I asked you where you had gotten
that idea, somehow I didn't expect you to define the
idea as the contest. I think a lot of people saw it
as more the expose.

Stewart: Yes, they did, and more so than I wanted. Of course
the whole idea of a Ph.D. examination is so fantastic
to the ordinary person that he doesn't understand what
it's about anyway. A lot of university life is
fantastic to people like Governor Reagan, for instance.
So they looked upon this as an expose, which I wasn't
trying to make it, particularly. It's interesting.
The people who appreciated Doctor's Oral the most, as
a class, I could really classify them. They were
people who were in and near a university, but not of
it. The people who were really in the university,
faculty people particularly, didn't care too much
for Doctor's Oral. People who were clear out of the
university didn't care the slightest for it. They
didn't know what it was about.

But the people who had been around universities,
had maybe done a little teaching, and gone out into
engineering or something like that, that kind of
person, they really enjoyed it. It was their book.

128

Riess: People who were close to the University, what do you
think they thought?

Stewart: I think it probably seemed somewhat shallow to them.
I don't know. Of course, it's funny, but that was
considered quite an Immoral book by some people.
The young couple living in sin. One old lady we knew
pretty well in Berkeley was very nasty about that,
that I should write about such a subject.

Riess: Yes, why did you write such an immoral book? [laughter]
Stewart: Even in those days, that sort of thing was happening.

That's kind of corny in some ways. I mean piling
the thing up all in one day. But that's what
made the book. I've often thought about how in oral
examinations, any kind of examination, you don't know
what the background of the person involved is. All
sorts of things may be happening, Just as they're
happening to the people giving the examination too.
So I think it was all right in that respect.

I think Joe Grantland was a pretty good character
too, actually. He's a very common type; at least he
was in those days. That miserable kind you can't
either fail or pass with a good heart. Those are the
ones that bother you, and make life bad for a professor.

Riess: I have a little summary by some reviewer: "Stewart
has been around, and I'd like to know how he gets
away with it. He sees people and they amuse him, and
a few move him, but not really too deeply."

Stewart: Well, I don't know about that. I think the book really
is a kind of comedy. You wouldn't expect in that
particular book too great depth of moving. Although
I tried to bring out a little difference in the
prologue and the epilogue there. Which again, I think,
are some of the best things I ever wrote.

Hugh Richmond, a professor in the English depart
ment now, much younger than I am, used for his epigraph
in a book he just published what I quoted about "the
love of knowledge and the knowledge of love."*

*MLet the love of knowledge be spread abroad," and
"Let the knowledge of love be spread abroad. "

129

HI ess: That was your own quote?

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

I made that one up as far as I know. It seems like
the obvious thing. You Just know that students
would translate it that way if they got a chance.

So, it was, as I say, a kind of in-between book.
I wrote some of it in Mexico, about half of it, and
then wrote the rest of it after I got back here. I
remember looking it over again to see if it was worth
finishing up, and I decided it was going to be no
great Job to finish it up. I was getting started to
work on Storm then anyway, but I figured I could get
this out of the way, so I did.

You see, Henry Holt got into a financial Jam,
and they reorganized. They didn't handle East of the
Giants very well. That was some more of my bad luck,
to get into a thing of that sort.

If you had had good luck, you would have been over
whelmed! [laughter]

Wouldn't that have been something I

They had a new manager come in, and he tried to
revive East of the Giants. He spent a lot of money
on it, but it's very difficult to do that. He got
out a new Jacket, and he spent some money advertising,
and tried to push it to get it started again. But he
couldn't get it going again. It sold fairly well; it
sold better in England than it sold here, and I guess
it sold better in Italy than it sold in England. I
don't know. It's had a funny kind of career. It
has enough of a romantic touch about it, you see, that
it's a kind of general least common denominator of
humanity or something.

Anyway, that was the time Henry Holt almost broke
up, and I got another agent then. They didn't want
to give this new book to Holt. Although Doctor's Oral
wasn't likely to be really a very profitable book,
Holt would have taken it, largely on the success of
East of the Giants. I think. (In fact their editor,
Bill Sloan, came out to see me. Again I was much
impressed, having a man come out from New York to see
me about a book. This was Just about the time the
other fellow did too. )

130

Stewart: Well, Holt would have taken Doctor's Oral and
given me a good advance on it too, but my agents
decided it was better not to go into Holt, because
that company was in a bad situation. They sent it
to Random House, and Random House took it. That was
how I got my connection with Random House. They put
out a very nice little book. Random House did
beautiful books too. They were an important factor
in the manufacture of books. But they learned the
trick from Knopf, I think. The two were pretty close
in their way of thinking. So it had a good enough
sale, but didn't do anything very much. It couldn't
be expected to. I got one of my first really nasty
reviews out of that one. Did you ever see that
review? It was in Saturday Review. I think. They
didn't like it at all.

That's about all there is to report about that
book.

Riess: Had there ever been any insider books like it written?

Stewart: Well, now that's interesting, because there's a man
named Brace who did a book that I Just read called
The Department. He taught in Boston University and
other places as a professor of English and then took
up writing novels, apparently quite late in life,
because he's about seventy now. This book called
The Department has a scene from a doctor's oral in it.

He had a funny business in that. About the birds,
All his characters have the names of birds. Which I
think is not a good practice! But he was obviously
having a little fun. I've had a few keys like that
in my books too, but not quite so formalistic as
this one. They're very unusual birds. I read on
and I thought, "That's funny." "There's a bird called
a Fulmar, and one man is named Partridge." Pretty
soon I became more and more suspicious, and started
going to the dictionary and looking up some of these
names. They were all birds. Rare birds, that you
didn't know about.

Riess: Well, that's a man who's calling for feedback.

Stewart: I don't know if he is or not. He's likely to get bad
feedback on that. It's so artificial. It gets in
people's way. I'd be willing to bet, though I might

•

131

Stewart: lose, that I'm the first man that's spotted it —
of a cold reader. He'd probably tell his friends
and they'd pass the word around. I Just bet you
that almost nobody would pick that out. These two
friends of ours read it before they passed the book
on to me, and I told them about this. That was news
to them. They hadn't the slightest idea.

Riess: I hope you told the author that you spotted it.

Stewart: I wrote, "As I read, it seemed to me that your
department consisted entirely of odd birds." I
figured if he can't get that, why! I'll probably
hear from him.

Another great admirer of Doctor's Oral was
Jacques Barzun. In fact, he wanted to get it reprinted.
He thought It was very good for graduate students. He
was dean then at Columbia. Well, I would have to say
that — some professors have taken it that way. The
chemistry department here has a copy in their library,
which they say their graduate students read.

Riess: As preparation for the experience?

Stewart: More or less, yes. I don't know whether they do any
more or not. ' All these things have changed so much
recently.

You didn't ask me what that was based on though,
what the real background was. Most people try to work
that as a roman a clef, different characters repre
senting different people around Berkeley.

Riess: Yes, when we talked about that it didn't seem to me
that you were about to come out and give me a one to
one —

Stewart: No, I certainly am not! For various reasons. In
the first place, it doesn't work that way. I did
have a certain background feeling about some of those
people, but I wouldn't say they were really
characterized, or there was any attempt to satirize
people in there.

Some of those things were real, though. I was
thinking more of the nature of the examination, the
"Blessed Damozel" business. And I always thought I

132

Stewart: passed my own doctor's oral in the first half minute
because Professor Krapp asked me that question about
the Vierhebungstheorie in German, as I've already
told you. I wish that I'd had a chance to talk about
that with him some time after I grew up ( so to speak ) ,
but he died quite a long time ago. I had a letter
then I spotted as being from his son. I wrote and
asked him, "Was your father George Phillip Krapp?"
He said he was. It's always nice to make those
contacts.

Anyway, after I answered that question I figured
I'd pretty well passed my oral. At least I figured
that in retrospect. I didn't figure It at the moment,
but I thought I was pretty good at that point. Then
about the middle of the examination, Professor Trent
had to go to a class and couldn't stay. As he went
out, I saw him nod at the chairman, [laughing] So
far so good! I got one vote.

Riess: It sounds like doctor's orals are not a test of

knowledge, so much, as a test of sophistication or
maturity, or sense of humor or character.

Stewart: Well, it's very hard to say what they are or what
they ought to be. I think they are a pretty good
test of knowledge, if they're conducted properly,
because in a written examination you can always cover
up, and you can open up allusions that sound as if
you knew a lot. There's an art to taking any kind of
examination. That's what I wrote Doctor's Oral about
really. But you see, in an oral examination, you
can't get away with that sort of thing. The moment
you open up on Lucretius or somebody, a professor
will ask you, "Now tell us about Lucretius. Just
what do you mean?" If you Just have heard the name
Lucretius, you're lost.

Then, you can really cover a tremendous amount
of territory in an examination very rapidly by the
oral method. Of course it has its weaknesses, like
any kind of system.

I think there's something to the whole idea of
examinations actually, either written or oral. It
is a test of character in a sense. I mean, if you
can't rise to an examination, why, you're not too
good. You should be able to muster yourself and do
something.

133

Riess: In an oral way? Anybody should be able to?

Stewart: Well, anybody who you'd want to pass for the degree
should be able to do it, yes. You're going to meet
crises all through your life, and if you can't meet
a crisis... And there are people who can't, as far
as that's concerned. Maybe sometimes it's unjust.
But if a person is good enough outside the examination,
then they usually manage to get him through sooner or
later.

They had failed six people in a row before I
came up. Did I tell you that? It made it even a
worse strain, but I figured I had a tradition of
victory; I had always got through. I'd try it.

Riess: After Doctor's Oral you wrote, Take Your Bible in
Your Hand?

Stewart: That was Just a little thing. The Dictionary of

American Biography asked me to do a short piece on
this man (William Henry) Thomes, and I got interested
in him, and did this little thing. It came out as
one of these private publications, very beautifully
printed. Did you ever see it? It's a very nice
thing.

Hiess: Yes. Colt Press. [1939]

Stewart: That was Jane Grobhorn. It's the sort of thing that
takes you about three-quarters of an hour to read.
Again, I spent a great deal more time on that book
than it really warranted, but it was fun to do it,
anyway.

Riess: I guess there are certain parallels between the
audience for that book and for John Phoenix.

Stewart: Oh, I don't know, I may have given you more of an
idea than is right about doing something for an
audience. As I look back, I've done a lot just
because the thing interested me. The puzzle, or the
pleasure, of working it out became fascinating to me
as such. Some of these things I knew wouldn't ever
get anywhere very much. So maybe I've exaggerated
the other side.

Stewart:* You wanted to know if there was ever any time when I
wanted to change my life-style and become a writer
exclusively. Of course, that thought occurred to me,
but not too strongly. As a matter of fact, I never
made any great money by my books in a regular way.
I was not a professional writer who could turn out
a Job to specifications. I never did learn that trick.
I can't say I ever tried too hard at it. So I didn't
get involved too much in the idea of quitting my
teaching. I felt I was in a stronger position with
the teaching.

Later on, as you probably know, I was only
teaching half time. I began my half-time service
with the University on July 1, 19^7. It was not
worked out with Ben Lehman, who was chairman of the
English Department, so much as it was directly with
Sproul, as president. As it turned out it was a
very unusual situation. I am about the only person
who had enjoyed that particular arrangement.

The idea for Storm, as I tell in the introduction
to the Modern Library edition, came to me while I was
in Mexico, in the early months of 1938- To repeat
here, there were some big storms in California which
were reported in the Mexican newspapers. It seemed
to me that anything which was so interesting as to be
reported to people clear off in Mexico, should have
a story in it. So I thought I would write the story
of what happened when the storm hit California. When
I got into the subject, I found it was a very much
greater subject than I had had in mind to start with.
I had not known much about meteorology at that point,
and I didn't realize that a storm really has a life
and growth and death of itself. That was a very
interesting idea to me when I struck it. I saw very
soon that it had tremendous implications in the book.

You suggest that this was the investigative side
of my nature which took over at this point. That
certainly is true. There's no question about that,
that I have a tremendous, well, you can say curiosity,
about all sorts of things. I really went to town on

*Because we had run out of tape, George Stewart dictated
the following in a handheld mic, pausing for my
questions, which can be deduced. [S.R. ]

135

Stewart: that matter, in connection with Storm* I did a lot
of work on meteorology. I got introduced to the
Weather Bureau in San Francisco. I used to visit
over there at times, especially when there were big
storms on. I got a lot out of that. I got to be
very friendly with some of those people, who are all
gone now.

I also had an arrangement with the University
on that. That was with Monroe Deutsch. I think he
held the title of vice-president at that time. He
said, "Well, you can consider it just as if you were
a scientist at work on something, and if you have to
take some time off to go to see something, why, that's
all right." He was a very fine man in that and other
respects.

So when a big storm came up, and we knew it was
coming, Ted and I would cut off and go someplace,
most often up to Dormer Pass to see what was happening
there. Gradually, I got more and more idea of the
possibilities. I would pick up stories and incidents.
I picked up the story of Johnnie Hartley going into
the dam. That actually happened. And the animal that
rolled down into the culvert was not a pig in the
original story. It was a bull. But anyway it made
a story. I shifted it to a boar because somehow or
other it made better sense. You could imagine a boar
being carried away more easily than a bull, which has
longer legs. Obviously the other could happen, but
it's not so easy to write about.

Then I went with the railroads. The Western
Pacific took me up on a little kind of flatcar all
through the Feather River Canyon. That's where I got
the story of the bull. It had nothing to do with what
I saw, but I got the story there.

Then the Southern Pacific took me through the
snow sheds. I rode in the engine of a snowplow
there. Of course it was before the streamliner was
stuck in the snow. That was an incident I did not
use, because it had not happened yet.

PG & E gave me very good cooperation. They took
me up to Grass Valley one day when there had been a
little storm, and there was damage around. And of
course the story of the dam — that was a PG & E dam,
too.

•

136

Stewart: And a lot happened along the U.S. 40, as it was
then. I went up one day — I was by myself this time —
and I oame to a place where there was a telephone
truck parked by the road, and a man getting out,
fooling around with equipment. So I stopped and asked
if I could go in with him to see what he was going
to do. He said, "Yes." I remember he gave me some
snowshoes. We went In, and here was a wire gone bad
up on a pole. He put on his climbers and climbed up
the pole. I watched him from down below as he was
working at it. As he was working there, this tree,
a fir tree I think it was, right close to him — I guess
it wasn't a fir tree, it was a cedar — it leaned over.
The snow was falling all the time. It Just started
leaning over. It leaned over right against the pole.
I didn't say anything, because I thought he saw what
was happening. He started to climb down, and when he
hit this tree he fell, right down into the snow.

He wasn't hurt, but he got up and he said, "I
was afraid I would fall on my ski poles," which were
stuck in the snow right at the bottom of the pole.
So I used that Incident — do you remember that? — almost
as it happened.

And then the incident of the two people and the
coyote. The two people went off the road and they
found them because of the coyote tracks. I used that
incident. It was funny on that one, because I talked
to the man who had something to do with finding them —
I think he was the superintendent up there. I said
something about, "That was very dramatic about the
coyote tracks." He said, "Aw, hell, there were tracks
all over everywhere. We didn't find them by the
coyote tracks! I put that in because it sounded kind
of good." [laughter] I thought if it sounded pretty
good for him, it ought to sound pretty good for me
too, so I kept it I

It was strictly research, yes. I didn't do any
writing until I had the thing all organized. I went
through two winters, doing that kind of work. Then
of course, when the spring came, after the second
winter, there wasn't any more work I could do on
research that amounted to anything, so I began writing
then.

In answer to your question, I can say that Random
House was very much interested in this. In fact, I

137

Stewart: think that was an important factor in their publishing
Doctor's Oral, that they knew I had the other book
on the way. Doctor's Oral, as I said, was not a
particularly attractive book financially, but a good
publisher is always willing to string along with an
author when he sees something that has possibilities
coming along in the future. Of course they didn't
know if I could do that book or not. It still was
pretty vague, but that's part of publishing. Storm
hadn't developed very much at the time I wrote the
contract for Doctor's Oral.

••••••MHMMBMMHMHMMMI^M

I'll say something about Storm too on the
technical side. You see, I already had two novels
besides the Ordeal by Hunger, which some people like
to call a novel (anyway, the technique had something
the same). I'd been experimenting. I've spoken
already about the point of view, and the question of
scene and summary, in those books. So I came to
Storm t and I still had the same problem. You always
have that problem. But here I had a great many themes,
a great many strands. I plotted this book too. I'm
a great visual person. I like to see things where
you can look at them. Storm has about a dozen threads
running through it. It has the general background,
objectively, of the storm itself. It has the weather
bureau. And then it has a great many other themes,
some of which run for only a short part of the book;
others run all the way through. Some disappear
because — well, in one instance, the man gets killed,
and that's done.

By this time I had had enough experience to do
that sort of thing, which is pretty difficult, and
to run these themes in parallel, I guess you'd call
it. It was very lucky that I did two novels before
I did Storm, before I got the idea of Storm. Because
if I'd got the idea of Storm, say, right after I'd
written Ordeal by Hunger, before I'd written any
novels, I probably would not have had the skill to
master it. I was very lucky (that was one case where
I was lucky in my career) that I got that bigger
theme when I was developed enough that I was able to
handle it.

>e ~.

[8V1

138

INTERVIEW VI, Storm, Fire, Names on the Land, Man;
beginnings and endings of books; work for the Navy;
a story; marriage to Theodosia Burton; the Facility
Club; loyalty oath crisis. (Recorded October 12, 1971)

[continuing discussion of Storm]

Stewart: When I started out I didn't know what I had hold of

at all, because I didn't know much about meteorology.
I had Just envisioned the story in the format which
had been done before, for instance in Grand Hotel,
in which you have a certain number of characters tied
up around some unity. In this case it would have been
the storm. That would have made a good enough book
too. But as I got into it, I saw the storm itself
had this life and death structure, so that the book
shifted to the storm, and the people became auxiliary
to the storm. I think that was the biggest stroke I
made in shaping the book up. As far as I know, nobody's
ever done that before. You can only do it with a
certain type of subject.

It came almost entirely as a sudden insight,
when I started working on the meteorology. I saw
that there was this evolution of a storm, something
which was really discovered in the year 191 7 > not so
very far back, with the researches of the great
Norwegian meteorologist, Vllhelm BJerknes, who really
transformed all of meteorology. Of course it's
developed a good deal and changed a good deal, but it
still remains the basic conception.

His conception was of a storm which began and
grew and had a powerful period and then died off.
That was Just made for my purposes — once I saw that
there was a cycle there. You have to see it first,

139

Stewart: of course. So I began studying that particular type
of storm, which wan the kind I would have to deal
with In California. (There are several types of
storms. That's not the only one. But this Is the
one I had to deal with on account of my geographical
background. )

I found that quotation which I used In the front
of Storm, from Sir Napier Shaw, about the story of
any natural event being a kind of fairy tale.* That
was made for my purposes also. I took that up, and
that helped shape my thinking.

Then I had to determine how long a time this
was going to cover. Of course I had always envisioned
it as a short time span. I'm terribly interested in
the problem of time. I would certainly go along with
Thornton Wilder on that.** I'd had two experiments
already, you see. I spoke about that In connection
with the other two novels. This was still another
way of handling time.

Then I started, drawing maps — that's the simplest
way to represent a storm — and going over to the
weather bureau, talking with the weather bureau people
over there. Then drawing more maps. Then I'd scrap
them all and start in again, and figure out how long
I needed to work out all these things. Gradually the
twelve worked out. I'm not sure how much the idea
of the magical number twelve had to do with that. It
probably had something to do with it, because twelve
is a famous number.

Riess: What's it famous for?

Stewart: Oh, twelve apostles [laughing] and the twelve days of
Christmas. Twelve, you see, is the place where the

* "Every theory of the course of events in nature is
necessarily based on some process of simplification
of the phenomena and is to some extent therefore a
fairy tale." Sir Napier Shaw, Manual of Meteorology;
I, 123-

**"... an unresting preoccupation with the surprise of
the gulf between each tiny occasion of the daily
life and the vast stretches of time and place in
which every individual plays his role." Writers at
Work. Viking Press, 1958, Thornton Wilder, p. 113.

Stewart: teens begin. It's the baker's dozen. You buy eggs
by the dozen. It's all tied up, and it's a magical
number, along with seven. But I don't know how
Important that was. It probably had some Influence,
because It's very neat to have things work out that
way. It was the right length of time.

You see, I had time to develop the storm, which
then was very small. And that gave me a chance to
work up all of my exposition. Get the characters
established in a period of rest, and introduce things
like the electric company,, and the highway patrol and
the snow-sweeping people. I got them all introduced
in a period of quiet, and then as the storm grew up,
everything got going harder, you see. That worked out
very nicely.

If the storm had started all at once, bang! you
see, I would have had a big storm going and no people,
nothing for the storm to fit into.

Hiess: It's a matter of building up tension?

Stewart: Yes, yes. Getting people Interested in these things.

Of course the people begin to think, "Well, something's
going to happen about that." "This fellow's riding
up the highway, and all that, and it's going to come
in," you see. That worked out very well.

I did some writing on Storm which I junked because
it didn't fit in well together. It was partly the
suggestion of the publishers, the editor there, Saxe
Commins. I did quite a little revision on Storm.

Hiess: What sort of material did you Junk?

Stewart: Oh, I had a couple who went up the road to get away

for a weekend, an unmarried couple. That was a story
I'd heard of, with a twist at the end. It wasn't a
bad episode. They sent out word that she was having
a baby, and the highway patrol fought their way in
through the snow to get them out of there. She walked

out with obviously no baby.
episode, but the publishers
of disturbed the book, as a
right. It's nice to have a
it for a change.

It was a good enough
thought the sex theme sort
whole. I think they were
book without any sex in

Hless:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Bless:

How did It feel to have part of the book rejected?

Well, that didn't bother me, because I don't think I
had much heart in It myself. I don't think I really
thought that was too good. They didn't reject It. I
could have kept It If I'd wanted to, but I didn't.
I agreed with them on It.

I had the Idea that once It was thought out, It was
all so much of a piece.

Well, no. Storm in a sense is not that all together.
Those different threads could be picked out, you see,
rather easily. You couldn't pick out very many of
them, or you wouldn't have any book left, [laughing]
You could pick out one or two all right. They
disentangle very easily. Actually, they weren't
connected crosswise. They were connected centrally
on the storm theme, but there were almost no cross-
connections between them. Each one could come right
out.

Has anybody used that pattern, now that you've done
it? Did anything come out like this, after Storm?

No, not much. There have been places where people
have taken over some part of the technique. It's
not an easy thing to do, you know. It's not easy
to get a theme that will carry it. Most people are
not interested in the natural background, at least
not most novelists. They want to emphasize the
connection of people all the time. I wouldn't say
that there's been anything which has directly Imitated
it, except that fellow in Holland that plagiarized
it pretty much. I've read books where I could say,
'Oh, there's something of Storm in that." You can

see that every now and then,
used that technique.

But nothing which really

There was quite an advertising campaign that went
with Storm. That whole treatment, the autograph
parties, etc., was that the first of your books to
receive that kind of promotion from the publishers?

Stewart: Oh, I think I had a little of that thing before that.

Riess: With East of the Giants did you go around to autograph?

Stewart: What* s-;his -name, the man who had the bookstore, the
father of the man who Just retired, Elder, he used
to have little parties pretty regularly, and one
thing or another, I've done things like that.

Rless: With Storm, did you tour the country?

Stewart: Well, of course, there again, I imagine I would have
done more if it hadn't been for Pearl Harbor. That
cut out that sort of thing. I had offers to do
lectures, but I didn't take them up.

That book had a big circulation, though. I
don't know how many copies of Storm have circulated.
People ask me that every now and then. I'm getting
now to say, "About a million,11 which might be true
at the present time. I'm not at all sure, because you
lose track of these things, particularly paperbacks.
Publishers never give you any real breakdown on how
many copies, and they sell them by the hundreds of
thousands. I don't think they keep very good track
themselves. If they get too many in a warehouse, they
Just pulp them and start all over again. I don't
think they ever count them carefully. So, Just
figuring the Book of the Month Club and the various
reprints, Including all the paperbacks and so forth,
and the Modern Library going on for twenty years or
more, I estimated it ten years or so ago and I came
up with 800,000, so I figure maybe it's gone to a
million — I don't know. That might not be a long way
off. Of ' course that would count the translations too.

Riess: Were you a changed man after all of the success of
this?

Stewart: I suppose, to some extent, yes. I had much more

confidence in myself. The additional money was very
useful too. It gave me more to come and go on, and
do some things that I wouldn't have been able to
afford doing before that time. That made a difference.

Riess: Is there anything else that you would like to say
about Storm?

Stewart: Well, I would like to say something sometime about

beginnings and endings. Have I talked about that yet?

Stewart: Storm has a remarkably good beginning and ending,
and that's not an accident. I worked that out very
carefully in both cases. I consider myself a
specialist on beginnings I I more or less felt, why
throw away your first sentence? That's the sentence
that you catch a person with. If you can catch a
person with the first sentence, well, catch them and
don't let them get away. That's my attitude.

I know I've had people tell me that. A man said
that starting one of my books was like eating the
first peanut. You can't stop, because something goes
on. If you look at my books, you will see that most
of them start with — all with a careful sentence, and
I think most of them with a striking sentence. Of
course Earth Abides is the most remarkable one. It
always took my breath away, and it does other people
too.

Also I'm very particular about the ending, because
that's what leaves the last taste in a person's mouth,
the ending of the story, the very wording and everything.
So I want to be careful with the beginning and ending.

Riess: Do your endings sum up in some way?

Stewart: Oh yes. I try to sum up and to call up the rest of
the story one way or another. That's the old trick
of swinging back to the beginning. That's always a
good trick. I did that a good deal.

Riess: I will go back and fill in some beginnings and endings
for the manuscript. But why don't you quote some
favorites?

Stewart: Well, the first sentence — I can't quote them all, I'm
very sorry, but I know what they're like. The first
sentence of Storm, you see, has one word in there
which is of great importance, which nobody would notice
probably.* Yet I have had people speak of it. That
is, the fact that it's in the past tense. "The earth

*Storm; "Enveloped in the gaseous film of the
atmosphere, half -covered by a skim of water forming
the oceans — the great sphere of the earth spun upon
its axis and moved inflexibly in its course around
the sun. "

•

*-. FS

144

Stewart: spun upon Its axis." That catches people's

attention immediately. I don't know whether you see
that or not.

But the point is, we think of the earth as a
continuous process, and when you say "the earth spun,"
it means that this is one particular moment of time.
And the whole book goes on that. This is what's
happening right now. It's a natural phenomenon, it's
a recurrent phenomenon, but you're dealing with this
particular instant.

Here's where my study of Russian came in, and
the aspects of the verb. English has aspects too,
really. We call them tenses in English, but they
really are aspects. I learned that when I studied
Russian, from my professor. Well, a little theoretical
background. I knew perfectly well what I was doing
when I wrote that past tense there.

Earth Abides starts out about the United States
being dissolved, "By order of the Acting President.
God save the people of the United States..."1 That's
a very startling sentence. You must make a first
sentence do as much work as you can, too. Establish
everything you possibly can. In two of my nonflotion
books, I tried to establish the authenticity of the
story in the first sentence. "'Tamsen Dormer was sad
as the wagons turned aside,' Mr. Thornton noted in his
diary." I gave the authority for it right there.
And the same in Pickett's Charge. The sentence I
worked over tremendously was the first sentence of
Sheep Rock. I can't quote it to you, but I remember
a funny little incident about that, speaking about
editorial work. I was going to bring this up when
we came to Sheep Rockt but I can mention it now Just
as well.

I went to New York. I had sent the manuscript
on some time before, and Saxe Commins had read it, and
he said, "Well, there isn't much I would suggest doing
with that manuscript, but we might take a look at it."
So he got it out and he said, "You know, I think we
ought to cut that comma out of that first sentence."
I looked at it and I didn't really think so. I thought
we'd better keep it. But that was the only suggestion
that was made, and I thought, politely, "Well, maybe
he's right." [laughter] So I said, "All right. Cut
it out."

Stewart: I went back to the hotel, and I got to thinking
about it, "I'm right. That comma ought to be there."
So I called up the next morning and said, "Hey, Saxe.
Would you mind putting that comma back in?" He said,
"Well, no. I wouldn't mind. That's all right if you
want it there. I'll put it back in." So that was
the editorial work on Sheep Rook. I wanted that
comma there to slow the movement a little bit. That
was really why I wanted it.

Some time I'd better give a reading of first
and last — openings and closings of my books. I'd
like to read them some time.

Host novelists, you know, don't go in for
striking first sentences. One of the really famous
ones, of course, is the one from Moby Dick. "Call
me Ishmael." That's a sentence that catches your
attention, right off. Then you've got Dickens, "It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times,"
and so forth. That's a famous one. But there are not
very many famous first sentences.

Riess: What was the first sentence of Fire?

Stewart: That was about the thundercloud, the storm sweeping
north over the crests of the mountains, with all its
lightning striking here and there.* That's a good
sentence.

Riess: I think your first sentences tend then to have a touch
of the ominous.

Stewart: Well, that's often been said about my work, that I

was a chronicler of catastrophe. That's not altogether
true, because after all I'm a chronicler of the ecology,
and in ecology there isn't any good or bad, really.
It's how it plays into the whole scheme of things. So
Storm, as I always try to emphasize, both in the book
and out of it, is not a disaster. The storm, after
all, is a necessary part — you've got to get the rain.
California would be dead without the rain and the snow
that comes. So it's not a disaster.

^"Suddenly ablaze with lightnings, the piled-up
thundercloud swept northwards across the tops of
the mountains."

Riess: That's what the book tells, but for somebody who
doesn't know as much as you do —

Stewart: Yes. They were always melodramatizlng Storm, and

building up the action — "this Is the greatest storm
of the century," and that sort of thing. I kept
saying all the time, "This is what happens every
year." Nobody ever paid any attention to that.

If I were writing Fire now, I would change the
approach of it a little bit. I've come to realize,
better than I did at the time, that fire too is an
ecological phenomenon. Fire is not necessarily a
bad thing in itself, it's only if it gets in the wrong
place. It is part of the cycle, really. Of course,
it's been disturbed by man, because it's mostly
burning in second growth stuff already. But not
altogether. It destroys something here and — of course
the deer come back. There are a great many more deer
after a fire, you see, than there are before. So as far
as the deer are concerned, it really builds them up.

Riess: Why is that?

Stewart: Well, they live on brush. A big forest is almost

barren. That's what most people don't realize. All
this sentiment about big trees is really a love of
the desert, in a way, because nothing much lives in
big trees. A few squirrels and some martens to eat
them, that's about all. When you get the second
growth, that's when the animals come in. You get rich
life that comes after a fire. There's something of
that in the book, but not too much. I would shift
that a little if I were writing it again.

Riess: Do you think that people feel what's lacking in a big
forest in that way?

Stewart: No, they just get sentimental about the big trees,

*Ed's Note: Fire ends: "Moist and clean, the north
west wind from the ocean blew steadily across the
long ridges, and from high-swinging cones, opened by
the fiery heat, the winged seeds drifted downward to
the earth. "

Stewart: which ^ive them a sense of awe to look at, I guess.
I've never been a big tree man myself. I think the
young forest Is often much more beautiful than the
old forest, fresher and greener and growing so fast.
It's youth, whereas the big trees are Just the old men.
They're Just standing there, waiting to fall over
someday I

Riess: The thing about going to big trees is the experience
of looking up through the tops.

Stewart: It's partly that. It's partly the sentiment which
has been built up over a hundred years or so. I've
often argued about that, that the young trees are
really more beautiful.

Riess: Do the last sentences come round from the first
sentence? In the case of Storm, does the last
sentence say something about the spinning earth?

Stewart: Oh, yes, it does. That's a nice sentence, the last
sentence there. "It gave no sign that storms or man
disturbed its tranquil round. Bright against the
black of midnight, or yellow at the dawn, it hung in
the sky — unflickering and serene." It's a nice
sentence. It does give you the earth in space again.
You're drawn off from it. You're so far away that
you don't have any impression of storms or anything.

Maybe we should have a few books in here so I
could read you some of the sentences.

Riess: Some writers include significant quotes, like your's
from Sir Napier Shaw. And there are sometimes other
clues and prefatory material in a book.

Stewart: All my books start right off. I mean, after all, that
one little sentence by Sir Napier Shaw is not enough
to do much. I keep away from prefaces. You noticed
that. Practically never. I hit the first sentence
and go. I can't see the point of having a lot of
stuff in front of your book. You might as well get
it going. If you want to have an introduction, put
it at the end. That's what I've done. And acknowledge
ments and that kind of thing.

Riess: In Doctor's Oral, then, it's all part of the book.

148

Stewart: I would call that part of the book, yes. That might
be called a kind of introduction, but I haven't even
had that much mostly. I've got about a paragraph in
The Years of the City. But mostly not.

Why throw it away? Take it from an advertiser's
point of view — that's the best position you have, the
very first page. That's your point of emphasis. You
see, all those devices like paragraphs and chapters
should be used for points of emphasis. Anybody is
bound to be affected by all that white space.

Riess: Do chapters tend to end at a time — in your writing — a
time where you would halt for the day?

Stewart: Oh, partly. If I were somewhere near the end of my

day, and I came to the end of a chapter, I would quit,
yes. But I generally conceived a chapter as a kind
of unit which creates an effect — in some books more
important than others. In East of the Giants, for
instance, the chapter was very important. But a
chapter never can be conceived as a complete unit,
because you don't want the person to quit reading.
After all, the chapter should lean upon the next
chapter, so that they go right on.

Riess: What about the ending sentences in chapters? Do they
have a certain value that you calculate, also?

Stewart: The paragraph has, certainly, and the last sentence
of a chapter is important. The first sentence too.
But it shouldn't have quite the same importance,
because it isn't a thing in itself. It leads on to
the next one. So it should be leading ahead, not
giving too great a sense of "this is the end," you
see. Because you never know — you never have the
perfect reader. You always imagine the perfect
reader, but —

Riess: Oh, tell me what the perfect reader would bet

Stewart: Well, the perfect reader is the one who would always

have good conditions under which to read. The doorbell
and telephone wouldn't ring, and so forth, so you
would have control of him. He would understand what
you were doing, would have a similar background. Not
the same background, of course, but a similar back
ground. In my books, particularly, I had to explain
certain things as I go along, Juggle two or three balls

149

Stewart;

at once. This reader would follow right along,
would be attuned to your reader, you see.

You

Hiess:

Then of course he would always stop reading at
the end of a chapter. He would never stop reading in
the middle of a chapter. He would also stop at the
proper places otherwise too. That's something you
can't really do. I don't think you want a reader to
read the whole book at once. Most of my books are
too long for that. Sometimes people write me that
they have, but I don't think reading up till three
o'clock in the morning really gives a book a very
good chance, because I think the reader gets too tired.
So to have the perfect reader, you would have the one
who would break off his reading at just the proper
time. Not just one chapter, but say he read four or
five chapters, or something like that. So you see,
you could have a perfect reader.

Do you think the perfect reader wouldn't have to go
back and check material?

Stewart: No, he wouldn't ever. He'd remember. That's asking
a good deal of a reader!

Riess: That's asking a good deal of a writer, too!

Stewart: Well, you see, unless you wrote for a perfect, or a
special reader, you wouldn't ever know. Because you
never know when you're saying things too often. For
instance, how often should you repeat a character's
name? I think several times, because the ordinary
reader is going to forget it, and then if you bring
it out all of a sudden, he won't pick up who the
person is. So you string along, you give him the
name two or three times, maybe even oftener. But
that may be an insult to a really good reader, [laughing]
He'd say, "Why are they giving me this so much for?"
You don't know.

A really keen reader — well, sometimes, of course,
it can go the other way. Sometimes they read too
fast also. I think you get one of these really high-
powered, high IQ readers, they sometimes will read too
fast. They don't savor what's going on. As I say,
you're up against an impossibility. You just hit a
certain average in there, with a shotgun method, and
you hope that you get people who will be able to read
it well enough. If they can't remember the character's

150

Stewart: name, they won't worry about It, or else they'll go
back and look it up again, or something like that.
But you can't be absolutely sure.

Hi ess: I think that someday you should play with the idea
of writing the same story for the limping, lame
reader and for your perfect reader.

Stewart: That would be fun, wouldn't it? I don't know that I
even write for the perfect reader. I think I look
upon my reader as needing some help. I need help when
I read a book. I have trouble picking up character's
names. I hate these books that throw so many
characters at you so fast, and don't give you much
clue to remembering who is tied up with which name,
that kind of thing.

I read this book on the San Francisco earthquake,
Just finished it, and every time they mention Funston,
they referred to him as Brigadier General Funston. I
got sick of reading that Brigadier General Funston.
I knew him by that time, you seel And every time they
referred to the mayor, they called him Mayor Schmitz.
They could have Just called him Schmitz, once they
got him introduced. But I thought that was a very
funny book in that respect.

No, I can see my reader as a person that has to
be snared, and then held. He's always trying to get
away. Something's always taking him away from my book!
[laughing] And so that's really my attitude towards
the reader. I make every effort to hold him, once —
I get him in the first sentence and then don't let
him get away. And I must have been fairly successful.

I had a club meeting last night, and here was
Frank Gerbode, who is one of the big surgeons of the
city. He was sitting beside me. He started talking
about Earth Abides. It turned out that his wife
Martha was critically ill (she has since died), and
they'd got the house full of nurses. He said it was
the second time round on Earth Abides. All the family
read it once before and now they're' reading it again.
He said the nurses are reading it. So that's very
nice.

Actually I think that's probably a good book to
die by. It's not religious, and yet it has a certain
feeling in the last part there. I know when Mrs.

151

Stewart: Stewart had her stroke I got out Earth Abides and read
all the last part of it. It was very comforting.

Hi ess: It's nice that you like your books.

Stewart: Well, I donft read them very often. When a book comes
out in 'a reprint, I sometimes do read it, because
people start asking me questions every now and then,
and you forget. You don't remember all the details
of a book forever. I often read something that way,
and I'm usually happy.

Let's talk about Names on the Land. That book
has, in many ways, been my favorite of all the books
I've done. I don't know if I would say that as an
absolute, but one reason is that it's the most
difficult book I ever did. It came out so that it
pleased me quite well in the end. That's important,
because after all, something you worked terribly hard
at and had. a terrific struggle trying to master,
naturally, you're impressed when you're able to do
something with it.

Riess: When did you start on it?

Stewart: I started on that immediately after I finished Storm.
I worked very hard on it. Of course I had a good
background on it before I started, because I'm
Interested in names. And I had a pretty well vacant
year at Princeton there, on that fellowship, so I did
a lot of work there. The greatest trouble, though,
was not the research in the ordinary sense, although
that was a big Job, a hard job also. But the greatest
Job was trying to shape the material into something
that you could do. There's no model for that book at
all. It is absolutely on its own. And I was able to
do that. That naturally pleased me very much that I
got it that way.

It's written in a somewhat unusual style, too.
Possibly a little too self-consciously. For instance —
I don't think there's a single use of the do or did,
paraphrastic negative, you know?

Riess: No, I don't know.

Stewart: Well, when you say "I did not," or "he did not." That's
avoided, I think all the way through there. I don't
think I ever used that. At that time I decided I didn't

152

Stewart:

like it. You can always avoid it — I may have made
a few slips. I don't think so, though.

And another thing, I used the relative pronoun
"which" all the time instead of "that." I'm not sure
that's too good, always, but that was my style. I
was doing that.

Riess:
Stewart:

Why did you?

It's

Well, the "did" business is not graceful, really,
a roundabout way of saying something. It's one of
these — it's a kind of a box that the English language
got itself caught up in. I didn't like it at that
time. I don't like it now. I keep away from it
pretty much. Even so, that was doctrinaire in Names
on the Land.

Riess: Would one notice it In reading it?

Stewart: No, I don't think you would. I don't think anybody
ever knows i^. I've never told anybody except you.
That isn't the point. I think the style of the book —
that's one reason I like it, it's probably the best
I ever did, or one of the best. There are passages
in that book which have always been very moving to me.
Have you read that one?

Hless: I skipped through it, looking up places I knew.

Stewart: Well, it's not for everybody, that book, although it's
appealed to a pretty good number of people. But as
I say, it's been in many ways my favorite book of all
of them.

Riess: You were mentioning some of the favorite passages.

Stewart: Yes. Well, I like the opening of that book, and the
ending.* They're both very good. I hope you don't
mind my being so complimentary to my own books!

*Names on the Land; "Once, from eastern ocean to
western ocean, the land stretched away without names.
Nameless headlands split the surf... Men came at last,
tribe following tribe..."

"After all else has passed, the names may yet
remain. *

153

Riess: No, and I hope you don't mind the fact that I can't
quote them to you.

Stewart: Well, I can't quote them either, as a matter of fact.
I know both the beginning and ending of that book.
I hit off all right. It starts off with a passage
about when there were no names, and then it ends at
the — one thing I was never quite happy about was
that when they put out the new edition of that book
they covered up my original ending. I didn't like
that. One of those jams you get into. At least I
know just how it should be.

The way they did it — well, it was a mechanical
problem, partly my fault. I didn't realize what they
were going to do. They just covered up the original
ending. They added some more chapters to it, you see.

Riess: And tried to use the original plates?

Stewart: Yes, they used the original plates. The book was

badly set up. Or not badly set up, but it was set up
during war time, and it didn't have whole pages blank
at the end of chapters. It's an interesting example
of the problem you can get into with a mechanical
problem like that. Again, a thing most people wouldn't
think of.

Riess: How is Names on the Land organized?

Stewart: It's organized chronologically, that's all. As well
as it can be. Of course very few things can be
organized absolutely chronologically.

But here, you see, you have to have the general
scheme in chronological order, but you have to package
it up in one way. For instance, there will come along
a chapter where you have to get in the French influence,
and of course you put that in where it more or less
belongs chronologically, but it may extend over a good
many years Itself, you see. So you have to package
it in. It gets to be somewhat difficult at times to
handle that. You do the best you can.

Riess: You always saw it as a history, rather than a
dictionary?

Stewart: Oh yes, that's the whole point, the story of how the
names are given, how the names came to the United
States, how they filled in the map. There's never

;

Stewart: been anything like that really, I don't think even

yet. You can't do it in most countries, "because you
don't have the data. In the United States you've got
pretty good data.

Riess: Did you do maps with it, or include them?

Stewart: Well, I didn't need to do maps particularly with

that, no. You could have done maps. I had printed
some maps in the revised edition, the new edition.
But the maps are chiefly statistical. They weren't
very useful to me.

Riess: I was thinking of something like layering of the colors
of the different influences of countries, maybe.

Stewart: Oh yes. There's been a great deal of that done in

European name study mostly. But that was really not
the sort of thing I wanted to do in this book. I
wasn't approaching it from a mass statistical approach.

Riess: At this point, was Random House Just taking everything
you wrote, or did you have to sell them on this idea?

Stewart: They took everything. At least, I wrote a contract
for that as soon as I had finished — well, when I was
in New York, the time that Storm came out.

Names on the Land sold fairly well. I can't
remember exactly. It got the front page of the New
York Herald Tribune, which was one of the big reviews
in those times. And it got very good reviews, some of
the best reviews I ever got.

Riess: [Having turned over tape...] You were going to read
some beginning and ending sentences.

Stewart: Well, here's Earth Abides, of course. "And the govern
ment of the United States of America is herewith
suspended, except in the District of Columbia, as of
the emergency." I think that's a good sentence.

Riess: Yes, that is I

Stewart: And here's the last of that book, the last paragraph,
two or three little sentences. "Then, though his
sight was now very dim, he looked again at the young
man. 'They will commit me to the earth,' he thought,
'yet I also commit them to the earth. There's nothing

155

Stewart: else by which men live. Men go and come, but earth
abides."1 That's actually the first time, I think,
"earth abides" is mentioned, given as so many words,
in the book.

Here's Sheep Rock, the sentence I was talking
about before. "A thousand years and more, by then,
had passed — since the silty waters of the dwindling
lake, withdrawing, had let the spring once more begin
to bubble out beneath the open sky."

The comma that we argued about was the one after
"then." "A thousand years and more, by then,..."
I wanted a little pause in there. It wasn't necessary
grammatically, but it's all right grammatically to put
a comma there, and it slows down the action. There
again, you see, was the idea of time. "A thousand
years and more, by then, had passed..." It isn't a
definition of when "then" is, but you've arrived at
some point, you see, dated by being a thousand years
and more from some other point.

A lot of this book dealt with long periods of
time. I coined words in there. There was no unit of
time longer than a millennium in ordinary usage,
which doesn't do at all. So I coined "decimillennium"
and "centimillennium," and I used "millennium" for a
million years. I doubt if you'd find those anywhere
else, but it's pretty obvious what they mean. I really
needed them in this book, because I was dealing in
periods very much longer than a thousand years. Let's
see what the ending of that is. I don't remember
exactly.

This is about the mountain sheep that they saw:
"The two men sat up, and after a few minutes the ram
reappeared, as he went up across one of the old beaches
and around the shoulder of the high black rock. Still
watching, they saw him again far off and little, as
he climbed the red slope of the mountain, till at the
crest he suddenly faded out into the brightness of the
sky."

Riess: There's a lot that's very poetic abo.ut your writing.

Stewart: I always thought of myself that way. I don't exactly
know what a poet is, but I always wrote with that in
mind. Sheep fiook is probably my most poetic book, I

156

Stewart: suppose people would say, the way it's put together.

Riess: That's Just the way it came out? Or did you work
over the passage?

Stewart: Well, I worked over it plenty, [laughing] It came
out somewhere. I'd have to look at my manuscript to
find that out. You'd find a lot of erasing on that.

Riess: When you finished Names on the Land, did you have any
of the subsequent names books in mind?

Stewart: No. It was a long time before I took them up. I
didn't see much else I could do along that line at
the time. Oh, I did think about it a little bit as
I remember, too, but I decided not to do anything more
about it, then. I'd done a good Job on that one,
and it's a good idea to quit when you've done a good
Job.

About Man — that I suppose is the most "tour de
force" thing I ever did. I'm not sure what a tour de
force is. Most of my books have been so called. I
don't like the term particularly well. It always
implies something superficial or artificial. But Man
is my greatest example of simplification, and turned
out to be over-simplification. People didn't like
the thing being made so easy. It had a pretty good
reception. It got some big reviews, surprisingly so.

I still think it's a good book, but it's over
simplified, probably. At least that seems to be the
general opinion.

Riess: You mention simplification as one of the things you
were working at as a writer.

Stewart: Oh yes. I don't think you can get things too simple,
myself. But other people don't look at it that way.
It seems to me that the story of man, seen that way,
is a very simple thing in many ways, if you look at
it with big enough perspective. It gets completely
fouled up by people putting "whereases" and "possibly 's"
and one thing and another. But if you get far enough
away to look at it, it becomes a very simple and very
fascinating story, and a moving story. That's really
what I tried to do, tell it in as simple as possible
terms, using the device of having man speaking in his

157

Stewart: own person, which of course raised a lot of obvious
Impossibilities. There's where the tour de force
comes in.

At times you have a problem whether it's a man
or a woman speaking, and that kind of thing. But
it worked out I think all right. It had a pretty
good success at the time it came out, but it hasn't
held up as well as it really ought to, I think. It's
almost what you'd call a young adult book, I think.
It's almost in some ways a Juvenile.

There's one sentence in it which has been picked
out and apparently it's becoming a classic sentence.
I've seen it quoted in two or three different books.
I think they quote from each other now. I don't
think they get it from Man! [laughter] But it's
very nice to see the old sentence coming out about
the scraper.

The general idea was that a scraper was a little
piece of partly shaped stone, and it's not a very
inspiring thing to Just look at it that way, but if
you think what it stands for, "it means not only a
scraper, but a thing to be scraped, most likely a
hide,..." It means leisure to do some scraping; and
it means the confidence that you'll have enough future
to enjoy what you've worked at. It stands for a whole
civilization, a whole culture, you might say, to figure
Just what the scraper means. I've seen it quoted
several times.

Hiess: You said at one point that one of your general themes
was "the great human love for the simple, which is
forced to yield in the end tragically to the complex."

Stewart: Yes, that is more or less the theme of Man I suppose,
the fact that things get more and more complicated
as you go along. One thing I did was to tie the
archaeology into the history too. Very few books
ever try to do that. They're archaeological or
historical. I tried to tie the two things together,
showing how the same threads went right on through.

Riess: But you were saying that it was important for you to
make the book simplified. I was trying to sort out
the simplified book from the idea of this being one
of your themes in writing a book, where the simple
things yield to the complicated. It seems like they

158

Riess: are two different things you're talking about, a theme
and a method.

Stewart: Yes. The only time I tried to adjust a book stylis
tically was The Years of the City, whloh has the four
different parts. You see, It has the four generations.
It starts with the first man as Just a boy, and the
last man is a very old man, so you get a spread of
about a hundred years In there, and about two hundred
years altogether. You get the four generations spread
out over two hundred years. It goes along with the
life of the city, which Is founded on the first day
of the story, with this boy. He's a young boy. And
It ends with the destruction of the city two hundred
years later when the very old man dies at the end of
the story.

Now I forget what I was going to illustrate by
that. Oh, the way the style adjusted. I tried to
write the first part more or less like a Juvenile,
because it was being written about the boy. Then the
third section was written in a quite complicated
style, because this was a very sophisticated third
generation rich man. I even tried to do a little
parody of Henry James as part of it. Then on the
last, it peters out again to a poverty-stricken old,
old man, with almost no faculties left. So I tried
to get the adjustment of style in that book. There's
not too much though. You can't overplay that sort of
thing, because it gets too mannered if you do, but
there is a slight suggestion in places there. The
second part is a young man, so the style is sort of
vigorous and clean cut. There's a difference all the
way through It.

Riess: Had the idea for Fire been lurking for a while?

Stewart: For a while, yes. After I did Storm, this man from
the New York Times — whose name I don't remember now,
he was a well-known book man — he came to interview me
there in New York. He did not like the book terribly
well. Then he said he thought it would be easy to do
another one like it. I said, "What would you do it
on?" He couldn't think — he thought possibly an insect
plague or something of that sort, but he couldn't
come up with anything. I know I couldn't either at
the time. People still talk about doing an earthquake
or a volcanic eruption. I Just don't see how you can
do it, because the time element Is too involved, for

159

Stewart: one thing. And they don't have the sense of life

that either the storm or the fire does. Hundreds of
people said that to me at one time or another, but I
said, HI don't see how I could do it." I never have
done it.

But I read a couple of books about forest fire.
In fact, I reviewed one for the Times and that gave
me the idea that you could do it with a forest fire,
and so I did it. I guess that's it. I started work
on that in 19^5* The war was still on. I made
contact with the Forest Service. Of course, they
were very pleased to have me doing a book like that.
They gave me very good cooperation. I was the depart
ment collaborator, which had a nasty sound during the
war, [laughing] but that was my official title. That
meant I didn't have any salary, but I had the privileges
and courtesies.

Then I was going to — let's get this timing worked
out. I started working in '44, not '45, only I didn't
get much done in '44 because I Just sort of started
out and then Parker Trask turned up and wanted me to
go on this Navy Job.

Riess: Please explain what that was.

Stewart: It was a pro-submarine Job. Most of our submarine

work was anti-submarine, of course, because that was
the big problem, but we also had a big submarine fleet.
This was a project really for undersea mapping. It's
pretty complicated but the question of navigating a
submarine and evading your enemies and so forth is all
tied up with the conditions of the water. Not too
much was known about it at that time, because the
basic scientific work was only partly done. So they
recruited me to write the stuff up.

It was a pretty unsatisfactory Job, as lots of
those war Jobs are, because, oh — you know, they're
all full of SNAFU one way or another. I got terribly
disgusted. But eventually I got the work done, as
far as I was supposed to do it. I had to get in a
good deal deeper than I thought at first. I had one
or two great moments of at least personal triumph,
that didn't ever get anywhere, but I like to remember
them. The great ooeanographer for our side was
Sverdrup, a Norwegian, about my age. He was Director
of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He checked

160

Stewart: everything we put out. I used to take my work out

to him to have him look it over. He was always very
nioe, and would come out and make suggestions where
I oould do something better.

I had this one idea all by myself, about ocean
ography and submarines, and I Just wrote it up. I
hadn't gotten it out of any book or anything, I Just
figured it out myself. So I wrote it up and took it
out, the whole section, the whole thing, to him. Not
Just that one paragraph. He was reading it, turning
over the leaves. He came to this page, and I was
watching. He was reading down through it, and he did
a double-take on this, went back and read it through
very carefully. He said, "You know, I never thought
of that myself, and it's right."

That's a nice thing to have happen, you know.
Just a little thing like that. They wouldn't publish
that though. The commander who was in charge of it
and had the naval say on it, wouldn't publish it,
because it hadn't ever been demonstrated by experience.
But it would have worked all right.

I had a few other interesting experiences. I
made one contribution to submarine tactics and one
contribution to submarine strategy. I don't think
anybody has ever put it into actual practice. The
question, you see, if you're in an ocean current and
you are located by an enemy sub-chaser, should you
evade down- current or up- current? I figured out,
well, you ought to evade down-current, because there
are certain technical reasons. I talked this over
with one submarine man, and he agreed with me. So,
if you ever get that situation, remember to evade down-
current.

I also suggested that they launch a big submarine
attack when the Chinese rivers flood, because that's
what the Germans had done to us off the Amazon. That
played hell with our merchant marine down there, because
somebody was sending these ships through the place
where the Amazon runs out to the ocean, and that gave
submarines a tremendous advantage, to get the fresh
water on top of the salt water. Which again is a
technical matter, so I made the suggestion that we
ought to do this when the Chinese rivers overflowed.
It would have worked, too, but by that time the war

161

Stewart: was nearly over. I donft think they ever put it into
effect, so I don't think I have the blood of any
Japanese on my hands at all, so far as I know.

Riess: It sounds like you really fell right in with that
task.

Stewart: Well, there were some very interesting things about
it. Parker Trask became a very good friend of mine.
He died about ten years ago. He was in Berkeley
after that. I used to see him a good deal. A very
nice guy. He went to Alaska with me on the trip when
I wrote N.A. I.

Riess: You went on that Job in 19*44 and. you had started on
Fire, but you stopped.

Stewart: I stopped. I did a little bit of research in San

Diego. The Forest Service there took me out one day,
but it didn't amount to anything. Then I came back.
I did some work on reading in the winter. It wasn't
quite like Storm. There wasn't the same technical
problem. A fire's a fire. It doesn't make so much
difference .

And then the next summer, the war was still on,
but I wasn't on that Job. I was back in Berkeley for
the summer. I went out with the Forest Service then.
They shipped me up to Portland. There was a terrific
fire outside Portland. I didn't get too much out of
that, but you learn slowly. Then I was in various
Jobs in Northern California, around several fires. I
saw some paratroopers Jump at a fire. Then I wanted
to get some experience on look-out, so they assigned
Sierra Buttes to me. Do you know where that is?

Riess: No, but that's now your favorite vacation spot, isn't
it?

Stewart: Yes. Right below that.
Riess: Did your wife come with you?

Stewart: No, my son did. He was seventeen then. That was very
nice. There's a needle up there at the top, and you
sit right on top of the thing. You had to climb up a
ladder. We figured we could throw our olive pits
about 2000 feet. We had to come down at night. That
was too bad. Now they have a permanent look-out where

•

162

Stewart: you can spend the night and everything.

I learned a lot up there. I didn't discover any
big fires. Actually, they gave me a look-out which
wasn't a very critical point, up there in the high
mountains. That was all right. I made my reports
and laid out my distances and my angles on smokes and
talked to the other lookouts occasionally. So I
could handle the girl lookout all right, doing the
story. I knew my stuff on that.

Something interesting happened there. They came
up to get me at the end of the week, and put a regular
lookout back on. I came down and got in the truck and
started going down to the town. We'd gone down the
road about ten miles, and the driver said, "Say, did
you know we dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese?"
No, I hadn't heard about it! I think I was about the
last man in the world to hear about the atomic bomb.

Riess: That's a good test of your powers of ESP, if you

thought you had any. You didn't sense anything strange
had happened?

Stewart: No. I was too busy dodging lightning and that sort
of thing.

That winter I didn't do too much on Fire. The
next year I went out again in the summer, and had some
more experience on fires. That's the summer I got —
they lost me. I didn't get lost. And the time the tree
almost fell on me. Did I tell you about when I almost
got killed in a fire?

That's a good story. I think we ought to get a
story in occasionally. I was on this fire detail, a
terribly disorganized fire. I'd been up most of the
night, and. I was tired. I was walking along a fire
trail, with the fire burning on the right hand, over
here. (You see how oriented I am?) The way I was
walking, the fire was on the right hand side. And
here was a big old snag, about a hundred feet tall,
burning, a very dry old snag. It was right about twenty
feet over in the fire. I knew it was dangerous. I
knew enough about things to keep an eye on it. I
walked along, I was up almost even with the tree, and
there was a little trickle of water coming down from a
spring. People had been walking along here, and it was

163

Stewart: all muddied up. I went to take a long step, to get
across. It wasn't really a Jump. And I was tired.
As I went to do this step, my left foot, which is my
Jumping foot, slipped in the mud, and I went right
down flat on my face in the mud, and right then I
heard the tree go over. Bangl I heard it crack. I
couldn't move, you know, I couldn't possibly get up
in time. Otherwise I could have run. The tree hit
Just about fifteen feet ahead of me.

That's the funny thing about life, though, you
see. If I hadn't fallen, I might have been Just about
where the tree hit! But then there would have been
a chance to get out of the road, if I could have seen
what was happening fast enough. It really didn't
bother me in the slightest though. I didn't even
think about it at the time very much. Then I realized
later that I was close to it.

Biess: Yes. That reminds me of Ben Lehman telling me about
Professor Utter struck down by the eucalyptus.

Stewart: Yes I I told him about this, and he said, "You're

carrying insurance, because there couldn't possibly
be two people in the English department killed by
trees falling on them. "

Riess: His story involved Utter stopping and getting a light
for his cigarette, or something, which was the fatal
act.

Stewart: I don't know about that. It might be true. I was at
that dinner with Utter. It was a windy night, a
dinner at the Faculty Club. I went out the front door
and he went put the back door. Again, that's a thing
I've thought of often, Just the way how your fate is
determined. You go out one door and the other guy
goes out the other door. That's it.

I didn't know about it of course until the next
day. I didn't know the tree went over. I don't know
about stopping to light a cigarette either. I never
heard that" before. The thing I liked about the Utter
story is that he put his arm up to protect his
head, when he heard the tree go. And he was a good
outdoors man. He would have reacted quickly.

Riess: How fast does a tree go over?

164

Stewart: It doesn't go as fast as all that, but of course a
eucalyptus tree has branches on It, and he may not
have got hit by the main trunk. Besides, he was In
the dark. He couldn't have told what was happening.
That would have been my trouble too, If I had been
there on my feet. You wouldn't know which way to
Jump. You might run right Into the thing. Funny, I
can still remember that was a windy night. Poor Mrs.
Utter had cancer at the time. She said, "Why can't
there be trees for both of us?'1

Well, by the end of that summer I knew pretty
much what I wanted to do with the story. It wasn't
too hard to write.

I sent It over to the Forest Service to check
the technical details, and I was very happy that they
only found two minute points which they thought I
ought to change. One of them was the business about
the two men working at the saw. They said that tree
was too small, and wasn't a test for anybody. You
had to have a bigger tree. The other one — oh, the top
of a sugar pine wasn't quite the way I said it was.
I changed that. I thought that was very nice that I
got into it far enough so I could really write to
please the technical people.

The story's in the Ponderosa Forest, you know.
I invented the Ponderosa Forest. I shoved the Plumas
Forest and Tahoe Forest apart and put the Ponderosa
in between. The wife of one of the rangers up there
in the Plumas Forest came to see me one day, and she
said that people are always driving in there and
saying, "What became of the Ponderosa Forest?" [laughter]
"We were driving up and it said 'Tahoe Forest' and all
of a sudden it changed to 'Plumas Forest.' We thought
the Ponderosa Forest was in between."

I want to show you something over here. I think
I know where it is. It's my relief map. That's one
of the few things I haven't given to the Bancroft
Library.

[Can't find it.] Maybe I can show it to you when
you come over again. It's Just a small relief map of
the area. My son is very good at that sort of thing.
It's based on the topographical map that I drew with
all the lines. It's the same thing as a topographical

165

Stewart: map put into actual relief. I probably should give

it to The Bancroft. The interesting thing about this
is that David Park did the coloring for me. So it's
a David Park original.

Riess: What is it made out of?

Stewart: Just plaster. It's painted. It's more or less the

color which you would get, you see, with the different
kind of trees and so forth.

Riess: In Fire you were using the name Judith Godoy a second
time, weren't you?

Stewart: Yes.
Riess: Why?

Stewart: Oh, I don't know. Lots of authors have used the same

character name. She was supposed to be the descendant,
the great-great-granddaughter or something, of Judith
in East of the Giants.

Riess: Did you ever say anything about her grand-parentage?

Stewart: Yes, Just in kind of a slanting way. She told him,
[Dave] after he carried her off from the tower, she
told him that this had happened to her ancestress who
had been carried away on a horse.

Actually, some of those people in Fire, the
professor she worked with at the university, for
Instance, were friends of mine. I've done that
several times. It's a dangerous thing. Sometimes
people don't like it.

For instance, the Hart's rugs get spoiled in
Earth Abides. Nobody is there to take care of the
overflow of water. Now, they're always talking about
their rugs! Oh, these have been very small things
actually. I did more in Fire than in any other book.
There's a character out of Storm in Fire, too, Johnny
Hartley. And then I used myself in Fire too, the one
who was collecting information on it. I just told
all of the different kind of people who got sucked
into the fire business and there was this man who was
collecting material on the fire.

- . •

166

Rless: The connective things seem to remind the reader that
the author is there and really in charge of the whole
story. I wonder how you respond to that idea.

Stewart: Well, I don't think that in my books, at least, the
author is there or not. The only time that I really
stepped out from behind the mask was in Sheep Rook,
and that was Just at the very end.

I've gone through several stages in that sort
of thing. In my early novels I kept very strictly
out of the picture, completely out. In East of the
Giants for instance. Then as I went along, I moved
rather in the other direction. In Storm and Fire
the author is pretty strictly out of it I should say.
Then as I worked along, I gradually came to feel more
and more, this is a sort of convention. After all,
the reader knew you were there all the time, and you
weren't really fooling anybody. So I sometimes made
use of it in the other direction.

Riess: I mean the sense of the work being under somebody's
control, that there's nothing that's accidental, in
the sense that life flows along in an accidental
fashion.

Stewart: Well, don't a lot of writers like to give the other
impression, that this is outside their control, that
they are not in control of the book, don't you think?

Riess: I felt that you Just decided to tell a little bit

about what you knew, which was probably everything.

Stewart: Yes. Well, in a sense that's true. In a sense I knew
a great deal more about the situation than I wrote
down. I had all these images of what the place was
like, and all that, and could have gone into any amount
of detail. Partly, those were memories, of course, of
places I've been, in fires, and so forth.

•

16?

Stewart: Do you want to bring this up short and put in some
direction now?

Riess: Well, we can go on with the sort of chronological
thing with your books, or we could break from that
and I could ask you ten out of maybe a hundred idle
questions that I have.

Stewart: All right, it would give us a little change.

Riess: [laughing] Idle questions department. Tell me about
Hollywood in 19^7- What was that experience like, and
what did you do there?

Stewart: I guess that was the time I went down to Disney's.

I'd been down to Hollywood a couple of times. I think
that was the only extended time I went down there — I
stayed a week that time. I never knew what they wanted
out of me, and I don't think they did either. It was
a typical Hollywood experience. I sat in a nice office
there and read a book most of the time, and once in a
while somebody would talk to me. I never did find out
what they wanted. It was Just the same old line, you
know. They could pick somebody's brain and that sort
of thing, and I think they were probably pleased enough
with what they got from me. They didn't pay me too
much money anyway.

Riess: Were you working on a script for Storm?

Stewart: No. No. I don't know what it had to do with, whether
I didn't show them what they wanted, or what they were
looking for, and they Just sent me back home again. It
was pleasant enough.

Riess: You weren't there long enough to accumulate all the
bad feelings about Hollywood that some writers have?

Stewart: No. I can see how you would very rapidly, though. I
had great respect for Walt Disney. I remember having
lunch with him, the two of us, one day. I can't
remember whether it was that trip, or another time I
was down there. But I never had any special contacts
with Hollywood. It's never meant anything to me
particularly.

Riess: Did you do much Sunday book reviewing, or reviewing
in general?

168

Stewart: I've never done a great deal of reviewing. The New
York Times had me on their list for a while, and I
did a certain number of books, nonfiction. I told
them I wasn't very much interested in reviewing novels,
I never did any very big reviews. That only went on
for five years or so, then like so many things, you
know, personality changes, or something like that,
they forget about that reviewer and they go on to
another reviewer. I just sort of eased out of it.
It never meant anything very much to me. It was a
nice connection to have.

Then I reviewed for the Chronicle occasionally.
Joe Jackson would give me some kind of special book.
He, of course, was a very close friend of mine, and I
think he handled me very smartly on that sort of thing,
He didn't Just give me routine reviews. It would be
some unusual type of thing, to do, Just occasionally.
It worked out very well.

Riess: That's a funny thing to say, that somebody handled
you "smartly."

Stewart: Well, I am difficult to handle. No, I think that's

essentially modesty on my part, isn't it, to say that
he handled me well? I wasn't such a good prospect
that he couldn't help handling me well.

One book I did was the first biography of Scott
Fitzgerald. He knew I knew Fitzgerald, or had known
him. I did a good review on that, too. Then he gave
me the Century Dictionary of Names, a great big three-
volume work which I still have, sitting right here.
It's one of the few books I brought along in the move
over here.

I did other miscellaneous reviews here and there,
but I was never really a regular reviewer.

Bless: I have in capital letters to ask you about a quote
that I think you used in the English department
history, "No man is as simple as his legend." Would
you apply that to yourself?

Stewart: Well, I can't say I know what my legend is, or whether
I have one, or how much of one I have. So I don't
see what I can say about that.

169

Hless:

Stewart:

Rless:

Stewart

Bless:
Stewart :

You said once that you felt that people expected
certain things of you.

Well, they may, but I don't know exactly what they
expect from me. I can imagine things that I might
like to have them expect of me, but I don't know that
that would be of much pertinency. I think every man
likes to think of himself as a strange and wonderful
character.

In 1922 you went to Michigan to teach,
year in Michigan like?

What was your

I got a lot of experience there. That was my first
real full teaching year. So I learned a lot,
accomplished quite a lot that year. Nothing like so
much, though, as that master's year at Berkeley where
so much was opened up. Of course, being my first
teaching year my nose was pretty well to the grindstone,
I wasn't doing much experimentation. I was getting
engaged.

Would you tell how you met your wife?

Well, I remember where I met her. The president's wife
gave a tea, and — I think it was pretty good that I
went to it. I don't remember exactly how or why I
did. I went with another instructor.

The wife of one of the English professors whom I
had met, and who was being nice to me, said, "I'd like
you to meet — " (I don't know what she said, "Miss
Burton," or whatever she said.) So I looked across
the room and there she was, and I went over and was
introduced. I can't say that I fell in love at that
moment, or she with me, but that was the time we met.
I think she had a pink dress on. She might have had.

She remembers about it too.* She thought I was
awful stiff. I think this lady introduced me as
"Dr. Stewart," because I wasn't a professor. Ted has
never been able to stand that title for some reason.
To this day, she hates anybody introducing me as "Dr."

*The lady had said to her, "There's a new instructor
in the English Department. I want you to be nice to
him." (She has been, for a good many years.) [G.S.]

170

Stewart: I don't prefer it, but I don't get irritated about it.
Riess: So, you married the president's daughter?

Stewart: The boss's daughter. She was home for a year then.

She hadn't been very well. She had gone to Vassar for
a year. She was everywhere, started out at the
University of Minnesota, and when her father came to
Michigan she came down then, and went to Vassar for
a year. Then she didn't go back to Vassar. She
spent this year — I don't think she went to college at
all, she was helping her mother around the place,
running the social events.

That was a year in between for her, and that's
when she got engaged. We were engaged for a year. She
went on and finished up her work at the University of
Michigan. I don't think we have anything very
startling to recount about that.

Riess: Did you go back to marry her?

Stewart: Yes, and we had a big do with the wedding. It was
really a Roman holiday. We were married in the
Clemens Library. It's like the Bancroft Library.
It was a nice new building, the way The Bancroft may
be a year or so from now. It happened to be Just
next to the president's house, so they had a canopy
across. They invited practically everybody. Among
the celebrities came Henry Pord, out from Detroit.
And we had the ceremony in the library. That was
very fitting after all, for me. [laughing] Then we
went back to the house and had a reception in the big
president's house.

And as I say, Henry Pord was the chief notable,
even more so than the groom, [laughter] He had his
social secretary send us a set of Conrad as a wedding
present, very beautifully bound, which was signed by
Conrad in the first volume. And so we had one of the
bridesmaids staked out to get Henry Pord to sign it
too, and he did. It looked like the signature on the
old Model T, exactly. We had that in our house there
in Berkeley. We collected two or three more signatures
on it. Carl Sandburg signed it once. We sold that,
when we broke the library up. David McGee, the
bookseller, bought it, and I don't know what he did
with it.

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

As I say, we had a great big wedding, and a lot
of wedding presents, some of which we still have, as
a matter of fact.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

Well, we came to California. We had a wild trip in
an old Studebaker car. There were some terrible
roads. We came out to Glacier Park. From there we
swung north into Canada to get across the mountains,
and then ended up with some terrible roads in Oregon,
and a trip down the then fairly rudimentary Redwood
Highway. There we broke a differential, and had to
spend three days camped out near a primitive roadside
garage while they sent in to Eureka or some place for
a new part. We finally made it through to Berkeley,
and to Pasadena, where my parents lived then.

Were your parents living then?

Yes. They came back for the wedding. My father was
about seventy-five then. He lived till he was ninety,

Well, it sounds like quite a do I

Oh, it was, they made 700 chicken salads or something
like that. It could have set us up in housekeeping
very nicely with what that wedding cost, couldn't it?

Especially if you had saved all the chicken salad.

Yes, we would have eaten that for about a year!
[laughter]

Do you, or did you, belong to social or professional
clubs much?

I was never a very great Joiner of things,
to more things right now than I ever have,

What about the American Names Society?

I belong

There I think I'm down as one of the charter members,
I didn't have much to do with actually organizing it.
I didn't think it was a very good time for it, as a
matter of fact. That was Just about the time of the
Korean War, and I think it had a hard time getting
going. It did get organized. I proved to have not
enough faith in the thing.

173

Stewart: I was one of the early presidents of it, and I
did a good Job I think on that, because I rescued it
from bankruptcy. I tried my hand at working up a
little bit of money, and I got it all right. I
figured that I hated to take over an organization that
fell down on its obligations. You see, we were taking
the money, the subscriptions for the year. I figured
it wouldn't amount to an awful lot of money, a few
hundred dollars, and if necessary I could get stuck
with that, it wouldn't ruin me. So I enjoyed working
it up. I got a lot of people to Join as associate
members, and give $25. I got a lot more subscriptions
one place and another by a little publicity. I got it
back on its feet. I was very happy about that. It's
still going.

Riess: Do people who have Just a hobby or curiosity about
names Join?

Stewart: There are a good many of those I think, yes. I keep
getting letters from people about names, on account
of my books, and when I reply I always send an
invitation to Join the society. I get a certain
amount of them but I don't know for how long — maybe
they Just Join for one year. I never follow up or
find out. After all, that's the way an organization
lives, by getting new people in.

Riess: Did you belong to University groups such as the Arts
Club and the English Club?

Stewart: I never belonged to the Arts Club. I never really
belonged to the English Club. I was taken into it
Just about the time it folded up, so I can't say
that I ever did anything with that. It had quite a
long, good career, and then, like all those student
organizations, something happened to it. It got out
of step with the times or something and it Just folded
up. That didn't mean anything to me.

Riess: How about the Bohemian Club? Are you a Bohemian?

Stewart: No, I'm not, but they've got me up for membership

now. I think I'll Join it if I get a chance, because
living over here now it's right down the street here
and I know a lot of people in it.* I was approached

*Joined, December, 1971, G.S.

Stewart: before, years ago, but I didn't take it up, because
when we lived In Berkeley there wasn't any point
In belonging to It.

Actually, I haven't belonged to anything very
much. The Faculty Club was, again, a professional
business. [Like the Modern Language Association.]
One day I was eating there and Bob Erode stuck his
head in the door, to see who was In that room. He
came around and said, "Could I nominate you for the
board of the Faculty Club?" I said, "Well, what's
it mean?" And so forth. I said, "All right. I
won't be elected, anyway." So I was elected. I got
Interested in that.

I did a good Job on that, I think. I was on the
board for three years, vice-president or something.
Then they elected me president and I was president for
three years. I really devoted myself to trying to
build up a little morale and spirit in the Faculty
Club, which was very much run down at that time. I
think people appreciated what I did, because there
are still people who call me Mr. President, [laughing]
That's very nice. I appreciated that. That was a nice
time, being president. I worked pretty hard at it.
Actually, that was all when I was emeritus, when I was
president.

Riess: It seemed to be about 1963 to 1967.

Stewart: Yes, that, I guess, was it.

Riess: Do you think it's growing as an influence?

Stewart: I think it's come over it's hardest years. It seems

to be doing better now. I think it's going all right.

Riess: Did it have an old Golden Age?
Stewart: Yes, it did.
Riess: When was that?

Stewart: Oh, I think around — it began in 1902 I think, in a

small way, and it came along. I think it was a great
institution for the faculty. Then about 1930 It kind
of began to go downhill, I think. I don't know.
Anyway, along after the fifties it was in not such
good shape. The great question now is whether you can

175

Stewart: get the younger men to Join it. The younger men

simply don't go into it. It's become an old men's
olub, which is very bad. I worked on that quite a
bit, but didn't get very far, trying to get some
interest among the younger men. Now they are
amalgamating with the Women's Faculty Club and they
are still working on their problem with the younger
men. One problem of course is the fact that the
faculty of the campus has become so big, it's hard
to focus on any one part, one point.

fiiess: You mean there are departmental clubs that people are
going to?

Stewart: I don't think clubs exactly. A lot of them eat out
of bags, which of course is cheaper, and they can
get together as a group in an office. And you have
the Golden Bear restaurant at North Gate. That seems
to be something of a problem.

In what you wanted to call the "Golden Days"
there, after lunch there would be a big gathering of
people in that room which is now the Howard Room.
They'd be playing cards and cursing and reading
magazines and playing chess, and the next room was
full of billiard players. There was a real gathering
of spirits there, after lunch.

When they remodeled the club, they got that room
all shifted around, and the only lounge is upstairs.
The thing Just went absolutely dead. It was a curious
kind of failure in the people who remodeled, the club.
They didn't realize they were killing the spirit of
the place at the same time they were remodeling it.
Now, they are going to remodel it again, and I think
they have that in mind. They're going to try to get
a gathering place.

Hi ess: Speaking of the faculty doing things together, do you
think crises help bring the University together?

Stewart: Well, yes and no. You take a thing like the oath

controversy. It brought certain people together and
other people apart. There were a lot of enmities
developed. In my own person I know that. I think on
the whole I came out of the oath controversy in a
better way than most people did. I didn't suffer any
great tragedy out of it. The oath really broke a

176

Stewart: certain number of people, put them under terrific
strain. They never reconstituted themselves, I
think. I could name names, but I don't need to.

On the other hand, I came out of it in pretty
good shape. Doing the Year of the Oath was a very
fine thing. I worked with about seventy people on
that. That gives me ties around the campus you
wouldn't ever imagine. I was the man they were
following there at that one point. You don't forget
it. I don't.

Riess: So people may draw together around an issue, or come
to life around an issue.

Stewart: That was one thing I had in mind when I undertook to
write that book. It was a therapeutic thing. It
gave people something to work at. Whether it was a
good thing or not was really not so much the problem.
They gave themselves up to this, and I think it was
very good for the people who got involved in that.

It was a very interesting thing. I worked
terribly hard on that, Just terribly hard, because I
did the whole thing in sixty days, and kept my teaching
going at the same time. I had a whole organization —
chief of staff, and a sort of inner council of five
people who met to plan the higher strategy of it. I
had little groups scattered around campus working on
this or that. Sometimes they didn't do anything that
amounted to anything, but at least they were working
at something.

Bless: That's interesting. I hadn't realized it was happening
so simultaneously. When did it start, exactly, in
terms of your sixty days?

Stewart: Well, it started about the middle of April that year. /?_r
I probably have the date down somewhere (April 4, 1^66-).
I handed the manuscript in in sixty days and then made
arrangements for publication. I had some luck on that.

Riess: Did you have to get it cleared with anybody?
Stewart: No. Only my own group.

Then there was a question of who was going to
sign it. I didn't want to sign it by myself. I
thought it would be better if somebody else signed it

177

Stewart: with me, but I couldn't find anybody who would sign
It with me. I had written nearly all of It, so In a
way I didn't blame them, signing something they
hadn't written. But after all, It was a kind of
Joint effort. I couldn't get anybody to sign It, so
I Just went and signed It myself.

It's an Interesting story about the publication
of that In a way. It's a long, continued story.
Howard Cady was out here then. I knew him slightly.
He was the West Coast representative for Doubleday.
Random House wouldn't take it. That was one of the
things I got sore at Random House about. So I got
in touch with Howard Cady. As I say, I knew him Just
slightly.

Riess: It was too hot a thing for them?

Stewart: Oh, they couldn't make any money out of it. They

thought they couldn't. Then Howard said he thought
Doubleday would do it. He'd recommend it. He fixed
it up. So Dcubleday published it. It was an
unsatisfactory book in many ways, because it had to
be done right in the middle of things. We couldn't
really write an ending to it. The controversy was
still going on.

Then years later I was able to repay that to
Howard Cady, because I saved his neck on one occasion.
That was interesting: One day I got a letter from
the International Nickel Company, from a local general
manager or something on the West Coast, and he said,
"Would you be willing to have a talk with Mr. So-and-So,
our vice-president?" Well, it was nothing to me. I
said, "Sure. I don't mind having a talk with the
vice-president of International Nickel. I don't know
what I can do for him, but...." [laughter]

So pretty soon they fixed it up, and the vice-
president came to see me in my office down in Dwinelle.
Turned out they wanted a book written about the company.
'They didn't offer it to me to write it, but they wanted
some advice on this. Would I see the president? "Yes.
I don't mind seeing the president." This was the vice-
president, who came all the way to ask me if I would
see the president. I said, "I don't mind seeing the
president." He said, "We'll pay your expenses back
to New York."

Stewart: I said, "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm going

to be in New York in about a month. I don't need any
expenses." They said, "Well, what fee would you
charge?" I said, "Oh, I don't know." He said, "How
about two hundred dollars?" I said, "Oh sure, that's
enough. "

I thought I'd get lunch out of it too, he would
take me to lunch. So we went to New York, and I
saw the president. It was a hot day down there and
he took me to lunch, and I got two hundred dollars.
I recommended Howard Cady as the man they should see.
(I guess it happened at that time that Howard got
fired. He really got a very tough deal. ) Howard
got himself in a good break with International Nickel.
They took him on for a temporary Job to rewrite all
the manuals, and Howard said it saved his neck. He
had four children and he was in a bad way, temporarily.
So it was a very nice thing to happen ten years later.
You never can tell when you're going to get a chance
to repay a debt.

I kept in touch with that vice-president of
International Nickel for a long time, [laughter] In
fact, he used to come out here and take my wife and
me to dinner. I haven't seen him in a long time. I
don't know what's happened to him.

They would have given me that book to write if
I'd made any gesture about it at all. Howard said
they wanted me to do it, but I didn't want to do it.
I could have made $50,000. They paid the man $50,000
who wrote it. There's money in those corporation
books. Because in a corporation's budget that's
nothing, you see.

Riess: You probably would have gotten interested in it, too.
Stewart: I probably would, yes.

179

INTERVIEW VII, Earth Abides, Year of the Oath,
Sheep Rock, U.S. *K), American Ways of Life, Years
of the City, Pickett's Charge, California Trail,
Good Lives ; premonitions, clubs, aging. (Recorded
October 26, 1971)

Riess: What was the genesis for Earth Abides?

Stewart: I don't know exactly what gave me the original idea,
but I'd had it for a long time before I wrote it.
After I finished Fire I very soon started in to work
on that.

I don't know whether I told you about going
around to interview various people around the
University. That was one way I got my Information
about what would happen. I would go to see a man
who knew about sheep, and ask what would happen to
PG&E and all those things. It was very interesting.
Most of these people were very skilled people, but
they were generally not very imaginative people. They
knew what they knew, and when you asked them to
project this into the future, it was very startling
to them. They had never thought of things like that,
you know, "What would happen if there weren't any
men around?"

They usually were interested in it, and they'd
come right back. I got used to the formula. I'd
ask them, "What would happen in that case? Without
any men?" They'd say, "Oh, yes, we'll tell you about
that." Then they'd start out and say, "This would
happen." Then they'd go on talking for about two
minutes, and then they'd say, "Well, maybe not.
Because there would be a secondary effect there. Maybe
something else would happen." And they'd get on to
thinking, and in a minute something else would come
up, and in another five minutes they'd say, "Well, we
really don't know what would happen."

180

Stewart: That was rather nice for me, because It gave me
a free hand, in some respects. Sometimes I differed
with them, actually. This man on sheep thought that
sheep would survive In spite of being such helpless
creatures, because he said there were so many she«p
that before the coyotes could get in and kill them
all off , there would be some more lambs bred , and
In the course of a few generations, they would adapt
and become wild again, so you really would have sheep
going on. I took it the other way, that the sheep
would not survive.

I went to see the same man in PG&E with whom I
had worked in Storm quite a bit. He was their chief
engineer, I think. He's a very fine specialist.
Again, not a man of imagination, particularly. I
asked him, "What would happen to your system if there
were no men around?" He gave me a long look and said,
"You know, I thought I'd considered everything possible
to this company, but I never considered what would
happen if there weren't any men around." [laughter]

He gave a long breath, and said, "Well, it would
be about this way: it would run for about a month.
Parts of it for longer." He knew it so well he could
tell. Then he said, "It wouldn't all go out at once,
Bang! It would go out In different sections, shut
off. Every section that shut off would give more
power to the ones that were left. Parts of it would
keep going for quite a while, until at the end it
would fade out."

I pretty much used that in the book, although I
heightened the effect in the end, and had it going out
just while Ish was looking at it. Obviously, because
that's the way I had to express it in a novel.

Of course I started out with Wendell Stanley's
quotation there, and that gave me something to work on.*

*"If a killing type of virus strain should suddenly
arise by mutation... It could, because of the rapid
transportation in which we indulge nowadays, be
carried to the far corners of the earth and cause the
deaths of millions of people." W.M. Stanley, in
Chemical and Engineering News. Dec. 22, 19^9 •

181

Stewart: I had the Idea before I had read that passage, but
that gave me a fine quotation for the beginning.

Riess: This was a pretty new kind of thinking for those
people.

Stewart: Well, yes. They've done more of it now. There have
been whole organizations, you know, that have given
themselves up to speculating what's going to happen
in the future. It was much newer then. It was a
rather new skill for most people. Their feelings —
they can't think that way.

I talked to the people at the bridge too. They
were quite interesting, the bridge authorities. They
knew exactly where the bridge was going to wear out.
They said the place where the water splashes on it
rusts already. It's a very slow business and it's
not a serious matter. It can be fixed up. But if
there were no men around, it eventually would go to
pieces, down there. But even so, it would be a very
long time before it went. A matter of many years.

Riess: This was after the atomic bomb, but this isn't the
way people had been thinking?

Stewart: Well, of course I had got the idea a long time before
the atomic bomb. And I didn't want the atomic bomb
in my story, for obvious reasons, because this would
Just blow everything up, the animals along with
everything else. This isn't that story, my story.

Riess: Maybe that accounts for people not having thought of
isolated things carrying on. If they had thought In
those years of devastation, they would have thought
in terms of total devastation.

Stewart: That would have been true, but actually, you see, I

was working on this such a short time after the atomic
bomb, they should have been thinking of these things
before that. You see, the atomic bomb was 19^5 and
I was working on this in 19^8. Practically the same
time.

I think, as I said before, the story becomes
really the story of the rehabilitation, so to me it
is not a particularly depressing story, not a disaster
story.

182

Rless:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart:

Hiess:
3 tewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

You oertalnly went easy on what happened to the
people.

Yes. Well, it's one of my feelings anyway that all
this talk, people expressing concern over what's
going to happen to the human race — I don't think
they really care. The human race as an abstraction
is not really Interesting, you see. It's the
individual human beings you're attached to, and if
you consider, they'll all be dead in a hundred years
anyway. I don't think most people really know what
they're thinking about when they talk about the
human race. Faceless thing, really. It's the

individual people that matter,
idealistic enough.

Maybe I'm Just not

One of the ideas I like to play with is that
there may have been a superior human race in the
past. There's no reason why there shouldn't have
been. There's no reason why we should be the best
there ever was. When you look at some of the achieve
ments, like the development of language — that's Just
an incredible thing. It strikes me that there were
some real genius types somewhere along the line there
that did a lot of things.

Within our history?

Not within our history, no, but within the range of,
say, anthropology, the skeletons we get, and so forth.
Although we may not have found the right ones.

Oh. That sounds like you.

Well, I'm not talking in mystical terms. I don't
mean something that existed a million, ten million
years ago. I mean, say, in the range of a 100,000
years, something like that.

What did Ish and Em, in Earth Abides, stand for?

Well, I really explained that pretty well in the book,
the fact that we had to have an observer, and Ish
was the observer, with that curious intellect, and Em
is the figure of courage that holds them all together.
I have a tremendous fixation on courage, as you may
have noticed. I believe that's the basic virtue. If
you don't have courage, you don't have anything.

183

Riess: So courage has nothing to do with intellect?
Stewart: No.

Riess: But the conflict, in the book, had to do with which
would survive.

Stewart: Yes. It was very important there. It wasn't so much
intellect as the mechanisms through which intellect
is working. Intellect would be there Just the same,
you know. You wouldn't breed that out very well.
It's the tools of intellect that can't be preserved,
and become useless. At least I think that's the way
it is.

Riess: In terms of a "good life"— do you think Ish had what
you later were thinking of when you wrote Good Lives?

Stewart: I think he did, pretty well, yes. I really do. I
never thought of it exactly in those terms, but I
think he did. He had disappointments, as everybody
has, and failures, as everybody has. My people in
Good Lives had failures, all of them, nearly all of
them, and hard times, but they came through. I think
Ish has that. Yes. And he dies, I think, rather
contented.

Riess: Reviewers wrote comments such as "Stewart's faith

in man's destiny" and "a lesson for the human race."
I wonder what the lesson for the human race was that
they were talking about?

Stewart: I think courage, probably. To keep going even under
the threat of the atomic bomb. Which had nothing to
do with the book, but which was inherent in the times,
obviously.

There were one or two bad reviews of Earth Abides.
Did you come across them? There was one woman who
thought it was terrible, and I was trying to make it
out. In the first place, I think she was a Catholic.
I think that situation bothered her somewhat, that
the Catholic Church hadn't survived. Once you broke
the apostolic succession, you couldn't go ahead!
[laughter] I think the present church probably could,
but the church back in those days couldn't have done
that. I don't quite see why she did. She said, "Where
are all those wonderful engineers and men that went
out and fought the storm?" Well, obviously they were

184

Stewart: dead, that's where they were I

I don't think it was a very important review.
I Just thought you might be interested to come across
it.

Riess: I should think people might have wished for more
detail in the book.

Stewart: The trouble there is a book can only stand so much
detail. You smother a novel if you start putting
everything in. You've got these things you can't
follow up. It gets to be an encyclopedia.

Riess: Actually, here's one sort of querulous review. "Ish
was confronted with moral and psychological problems,
on the elementary level, and George Stewart is not
altogether happy in dealing with them. . .happier with
natural processes."

Stewart: Yes. Well, that's probably true enough. It was a
harder book to write, in some ways.

Riess: What has been done about filming it?

Stewart: Well, it's under contract with an option, right now.
[see p. ^5] Lots of people have played around with
it, yes. Then On the Beach came out, and that, in a
way, killed off that idea of that kind of book. That
was a big movie, you remember. That killed it off
for a long time, but it has come back, and it's
actually under option. I had an inquiry about picture
rights on Ordeal by Hunger too, Just the other day.
Called from Los Angeles. I referred them to Houghton-
Mifflin. They buy up these options pretty cheaply
and pretty readily, you know, and that doesn't mean
too much. I wouldn't be surprised if they sold the
option on that.

Riess: The next thing you got into was the oath, and the
book, Year of the Oath.

Stewart: I could tell you something about that whole experience
from my personal participation, though I'm sure the
project has a tremendous amount of testimony on that
oath.

Riess: Well, nobody seems to be able to agree on what

happened. Why is there so much confusion, from that

185

Riess: very time down to the present?

Stewart: Probably the reason there was so much confusion is
that it was a highly charged, emotional issue, and
it became more and more so. Starting out rather
simply, it became more and more complicated, as if
some bad genius were directing the whole thing. It
developed into personal antipathies, some of which
never died out. It went on that way.

I was not, at the beginning, or even any place,
nearly as deeply involved emotionally as a lot of
people were. People like Loewenburg, for Instance,
were tremendously stirred by the whole thing. I think
Caldwell was never the same man afterwards. I knew
him extremely well. And there were quite a few of
them, some of whom remained as non-signers; others
signed, eventually.

Of course I considered the question of whether I
should not sign it. I finally decided that it wasn't
my bag, as they would say these days, that I was
really not enough committed on the matter to hang out
as a non-signer. I made that decision, and it's very
good to make a decision, I think. Then I decided I
would do my part. I would do this book. And so I
did. As I said last time, I consciously realized this
book was a very good therapeutic project, not only
for me, but for other people involved in it. I think
it worked out that way. It helped people out a lot.

If some people had come in and worked on it,
instead of sitting around, they might have been better
off too. Anyway, it went through. It was one of the
most concentrated Jobs I've ever worked on. I think
I've told a little about that. So, I did manage to
get it across. And as I have to say, it's not much
of a book, because it was written before the thing
was over. We didn't know if it was over or not. I
suppose in some ways it's an even better book for
that reason, because it's very much involved. It was
written right in that time, and there are very few
examples of books like that that are written right at
the time.

Bless: I guess people felt comfortable working on that,
getting that objectivity.

Stewart: Yes. Yes, I think they did. I still have that personal
relationship to a lot of the people.

1
-

186

Hiess:
Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart:

Riess:

Stewart:

So they must have decided that they could trust you.
These are people you hadn't known particularly,
before ?

Most of them I had known, yes, but not necessarily
very well. The English department was very heavily
involved, as you would expect.

Yes, why is that?

It's the same old phrase, "the spearhead of the
humanities," they are that group. They're the ones
who see things from a humanistic point of view, I
think, more than any other department.

More than history?

Oh yes. Much more than history. History has tended
more to go over to the social sciences, and in a
sense has lost the humanistic touch. I shouldn't say
that out loud, I suppose, but it seems to be true.
Philosophy has got into a specialty, and the foreign
languages of course are linguistic, primarily, rather
than humanistic.

You get lots of individual people where that
doesn't apply, but to take the mass, I think the
English department supplies far more than its share,
and, interestingly enough, the speech department is
somewhat the same.

Had people been spending any time thinking about
academic freedom before

No, not very much. I think that's interesting,
because in a sense you don't have academic freedom
when you start thinking about it. You've got to be
in a state of innocence, so to speak, to have it,
because when you begin thinking, "This is my academic
freedom, I'm going to have to save it," well, then of
course you don't have academic freedom. You're
fighting for it, perhaps, but you don't really have
it.

No, we didn't have much problem about that,
before. I don't think we were particularly radical.
I don't think we said things that we might have said
at times. There was one matter, you know, in 19*K),
I think when the regents put in their ant 1- communist

•

18?

Stewart :

Hless:

Stewart:

Hless:

Stewart:

rule. That went down with scarcely a murmur, whereas
now that would be a big Issue. I know I was worried
about It, and I made some gestures, talking to some
of the older men, but I remember they didn't get tied
up In It. It seemed to me a bad thing at the time.
I don't know how many other people felt that way,
but I didn't get anywhere on It.

What was the Issue that got you involved at the
University of Nevada?

Well, one thing that I did undertake when I did not
sign the oath — I more or less propagated the saying
about "Sign, stay, and fight," which was a good slogan,
you see, at that time. Because once you don't sign,
and get thrown out, why, you're dead. And you can't
do anything. If all the men who objected more or less
to the oath had gone out of the university, you would
have had a conservative, dead University left. And
so I was rather quick to take up something else which
could be done.

This University of Nevada business: some
particular person got me Interested in it, and it
seemed a place where we could do something. So I got
this petition, or letter, circulated. We got it signed
pretty well. I knew how to organize one of these
things now, so I had the thing worked out pretty well.
We got quite a good lot of signatures, and we mobilized
Stanford, and Pomona, and, I think, UCLA. We got quite
a movement going, and I thought it had some Influence.
I think it bucked up the people at Nevada considerably,
which of course was the reason for doing it.

It didn't last very long. It was Just, so to
speak, a quickie. But it was useful, I think.

You say you know how to do one of these things,
means you know how to mobilize signatures?

That

Well, sort of organize things, get people working
for it. And of course I knew the campus. I knew
where you could get things done. Incidentally, the
most trouble we had on that petition, or letter, was
the zoology department. It was their man who was in
trouble up there. He was actually a Ph.D. from their
department. And we couldn't get any signatures out
of zoology. I think, Just because they were, at
that time at least, an extremely conservative, non-

188

Stewart: committed group. I remember saying to the man (Jim
Lynch) who was working as my chief of staff on it,
"We've got to get somebody from zoology."

He, being a very good man, went down and had to
do a regular secret service Job. He came back and
said, "First I got in touch with the secretary and
asked her. She said, 'Well this department won't
sign anything, but you might get this man, and if
you get him you might get this other fellow. ' " So
he went around to these offices and he got this man.
He got a couple of signatures, so it didn't look too
bad. It went up to Nevada.

Riess: Chief of staff?

Stewart: Yes, somebody who can do the leg work and is willing
to do it. You have to have one man who is able to
sit and think about the thing a little.

Riess: Do you think if you hadn't done the oath book that
anybody else would have?

Stewart: I don't think anybody else would have. There was one
man who started to, a student. In fact he had been
working on the Year of the Oath. We didn't have
students generally on that, but this fellow wanted to
do things so much that we said, "Sure, you can do
something." He got discontented with working on this
Job too. He pulled out and said he was going to do
his own book, but he never got anything done.

We sent out a questionnaire to the faculty that
had some interesting responses on it. I had all those
questionnaires. And one reason I have a scunner on
David Gardner was that he didn't bring back all that
stuff he borrowed when he was doing his book.*

Riess: "Scunner?"

Stewart: That's an old saying. S-c-u-n-n-e-r, I suppose, though
I never saw it spelled. It means I'm slightly
irritated.

*David P. Gardner, The California Oath Controversy.
Berkeley, 196?.

189

Rless: I remember oase histories at the back. Were they
from the questionnaire?

Stewart: Yes. I tried to do the book to keep it on a kind of
personal basis. It was a good idea to get away from
the social science approach, and try to put it in a
personal manner. You get accused of being sentimental
in a case of that sort, but maybe you are.

Riess: Speaking of issues, was your interest in the Vigilantes
all of a piece with this?

Stewart: No, I don't think so. The interest in the Vigilantes
went back a long, long, way, clear to 1920. I had
done a course with Chauncey Wells — that composition
course — in which I had the general background of
California to work on, and I got into the Vigilantes
at that time, particularly the newspaper reports of
1851 » which are terribly fascinating things to me
still. And way back in early 1930 I had tried to do
a book on the Vigilantes of 1851. I tried to do it
Just from newspaper clippings. Actually some publisher
was going to publish that, but he never did. I think
he went broke or something. Some second-string
publisher.

The thing still kept with me. I had this big
pile of stuff on it, and finally I used it. I'm not
sure it was a good idea. It wasn't a book that
interested people a great deal. But that was a long
time in the background. It didn't have anything to
do with the oath, r Committee of Vigilance, 1964]

Riess: After the oath book you wrote Sheep Rook, which seemed
different from all your other things.

Stewart: Well, it is and it Isn't. It's different in some
respects, but It still has the theme of ecology — I
mean ecology in the older sense, that is, all the
things that go to make up a place.

Riess: But now there's a sort of troubled soul, it seems to

me, in the middle of all that. A real sense of a man —

Stewart: Yes. Yes. A man trying to understand it. I don't

think that I'm that man, though. I think that's pretty
objectively conceived. I'm the other man in the book,
you know, the man who goes out across the flats in
the oar.

190

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

Hiess:

Stewart:

Hiess:

Stewart :

The other fellow is the observer, who is a
character all right. His soul is troubled, no
question about that. But I don't think it's my soul.

How was that book planned?

For a long time I had the place pretty much in my
mind, and it's a small place. I didn't need to work
out so very much. Of course, it's a complicated
structure of a book, I suppose. It's sort of three

times round and three times round,
all comes off.

I'm not sure it

I went out there, in 19^1, with Charlie Camp.
And I think I got the idea of a book almost immediately,
while I was there. The story of our going out there
is pretty much what happened, except that there
weren't any sheep. That was an imaginative part there.
There could have been, because that's sheep country,
undoubtedly.

And what is the name of the real place?

Black Rock. It's very much as described there.

But you never lived there for any extended period of
time?

No, I never lived there for more than a few days at
a time. It used to scare me to death. I suppose
that's why it fascinated me so much. It's a grim
place. You're isolated. If you had any accident,
you'd never get out.

It's a place of extremes. I've been shivering
at a little campfire Just before the sun was up over
the ridge there. The sun didn't get up very early,
because you were under the ridge. I was Just
shivering, with all the clothes on I could get. The
sun comes up, and it's Just like standing in front
of a fire. Just Bang! You start taking your sweater
off, and then it's hot! The temperature must Jump
fifty degrees or something, Just in that time. It's
Just the pitiless cold and the pitiless heat, coming
on like that.

I got into that place a lot more when I worked
on The California Trail. (I mean, I got into the
knowledge. I wasn't out there.) A lot of the

191

Stewart: Forty-niners went around that way. I hadn't realized
how many of them there were when I first worked on It.

Rless: Did you first work on It In 19^1?

Stewart: No, I didn't do any work on that book at all until

not so long before I published It. I did collect some
Information as I went along. I was out there quite
a few times, after the war was over, you see. I
couldn't go during the war, because there was no
gasoline. But then after that I got out there several
times with different people. So I got different
points of view on it. This Parker Trask went with me,
and worked out the whole geology for me, about what
was there and what had happened. Carl Sauer, the
geographer, and Starker Leopold, the wild-life expert,
were also along, but I remember that trip largely for
car- trouble. I took a couple of young anthropologists
out there once, and they were very interesting.

Riess: Is it a place that brings out the same kind of things
in other people as it did in you?

Stewart: Well, it does, yes, if you're a certain type, if
you're sensitive to that sort of thing. Kenneth
Carpenter and his wife, at Reno — I think I told you
that they were fascinated with the place. He's the
man who sent me the picture of it there.

Riess: Was it an easy book to write?

Stewart: It was rather hard to write. I'm making it sound as
if all my books are hard to write. I can also give
the impression that they were easy to write! It was
hard to get it the way I wanted it, anyway.

Riess: You said something about point of view being difficult
there.

Stewart: Well, I was trying to get as many as possible points
of view, as you can see. The point of view is very
various. A lot of it is objective point of view,
though. But there are also the other people that are
involved.

Riess: What about all those objects that figure in your books?
Where is the blue pitcher from Sheep Rock?

192

Stewart: The Carpenters have that. I gave that to them. I
thought they'd give it a good home, [laughing]
The hammer (Earth Abides) is right over there. I
guess you saw that. I don't have anything much
from Black Rock now, except I've got a nice obsidian
point that a man gave me at a cocktail party, a great
big cocktail party down at the Palace, as a matter of
fact. The Historical Society gave this big cocktail
party, and. this guy came over through the midst of
about two hundred people, and he told me his name.
He said, "I've got something for you." And he gave
me this thing. A very funny business. It's a nice
thing to have a man who comes to cocktail parties and
gives you something, [laughing]

Here it is, a projectile point of some kind.
There used to be lots of them around Black Rock. Now,
they've been pretty well picked up. I picked up some
of them, myself.

Riess: How did you choose sheep for renaming Black Rock?

Stewart: Well, I didn't want to use the Black Rock name for it,
because I wanted to keep the book a novel. Sheep
Rock is a common term and occurs various places in
the Western states. Usually for wild sheep, for
mountain sheep, and sometimes for domestic sheep. It's
a nice, solid name. I liked it. A good straight
forward name. And it tied in with the theme of the
sheep, which I used in the book.

To talk about Sheep Rook as one in a series of
novels, I may say that it represents a kind of end
point. The series starts with Storm, runs on through
Fire and Earth Abides, and in a way comes to an end
in Sheep Rook, although the Years of the City in a way
carry some of the ideas on. These might be called my
ecological novels. They came very swiftly one after
the other, especially when you consider that I was
writing nonflctlon books during that period also.
These books I had in mind clearly long before I wrote
them, and was just waiting to get a chance to get at
them. On the other hand, I thought a great deal about
what I was going to do next before I decided to write
the Years of the Citv.

Riess: What did you get into after Sheep Rook?

193

Stewart: In 1951 we took a six-month trip to Europe. We

hadn't been there In a long time. We got a car in
England, and we drove around the British Isles, and
then down clear to Sicily. Then we drove around back
over the Ionian Coast to Brindisi, and took a boat to
Greece, which was almost pioneering in those days.
You see, there was little traffic to Greece then, on
account of the civil war Just being over. We spent
a month in Athens. So I was out of circulation, and
I wasn't doing any writing at that time.

Then, of course, I had done the work on U.S. *fO«
pretty much, by that time. We came back to the United
States in January, and along about July I got a call
from Washington about whether I would take the
Pulbright Professorship at Athens. I hadn't had any
intention of that. I hadn't been in negotiation or
anything. I said I could take it for half a year.
I wouldn't take it for a year, because in the arrange
ment I had with the University I couldn't afford to
take a whole year off. I took every half a year off
anyway, and if I took the other half a year off, I
lost all the salary. So it was Just too much. They
were hard up for somebody, so they took me for half
a year.

Having come back from Greece in January, I thus
went back again in August, though I hadn't expected to,
and spent that time in Athens. So that took me again
away from doing my writing. U.S. ^0 actually came out
while I was in Athens that second time.

Riess: I thought that was the sort of thing people applied
for, Pul bright s.

Stewart: I don't know how it is at the professorial level. I
rather think they would be asked, in most cases. At
the graduate student level, I think you'd apply. They
naturally wouldn't know about graduate students. I
don't know how I was picked out. Of course, I'd been
in Athens, and it might have been through Morris
Bishop, who was the previous professor. I had met
him there. He might have passed my name on. I never
asked him.

Riess: Were you to lecture on "American Ways of Life?"

Stewart: That was the topic I chose, with the idea of doing that
book, eventually, out of it. I'd had that book in mind

194

Stewart: for quite a long time. A great deal of it I did do,
as lectures in Athens, not all of it.

Riess: You had been working on U.S. 40 then too? Amazing!

Stewart: Well, I practice superfetation. Do you know what
that is?

Riess: No.

Stewart: Superfetation is what a rabbit does. She starts one
litter before she finishes the last, [laughter] You
could probably find, that out in this book here. Those
are the kind of dates I put in. I know I did the one
trip for U.S. 4-0 just at the time I'd finished doing
the work on Year of the Oath. I was in daily communica
tion with Berkeley, because I'd have to telephone back.

You'll get a lot out of this book, [date book]
Here are where the Black Rock trips are narked. On
August 10 I left Berkeley for the U.S. 40 trip, 1950.
I got back on September 20. It will tell you that
kind of thing. That was the big trip I took there.
I'd done some work on it before. Oh, if I get to

reading in this,
it down here.

I won't do anything else. I'll put

So I did the work on U.S. 40. What I was trying
to do there — these picture books were Just becoming popul;
you see, and I knew I was an anachronism doing this,
because I believe a picture should tell a story, which
is the last thing any of these people think. So I
told the story of each picture, what really was in it.
I think there's still a lot to be said for that theory,
because all these books of pictures, people just turn
the pages, and they get an aesthetic appreciation, a
fine moment, from them. But they don't really know
what's in the picture. I think that's too bad. If
you've looked at that book you know I try to hold a
person on the page as long as you can, to see what's
going on.

What I tried to work out in that book was Just
exactly what everything was. In the fine old pictures
of the Civil War — they send me this Civil War magazine —
you can't tell what's happening half the time, what
those people are doing, whether they're officers or
men, that kind of thing.

195

Rless:
Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Rless:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart

So, did you propose this book to Houghton-Mifflin?

I proposed it to Random House first. They didn't
like the idea. 'That's one of my quarrels with Random
House. So I took it to Houghton-Mifflin who did like
the idea. Of course, I think a publisher is always
more receptive to a man who isn't his author already
than he is to somebody who is, because he likes to
get somebody who's with another publisher.

Anyway, they took it. That book went over quite
well. It had a short life because the new idea on
freeways killed old U.S. *K). Remember my mentioning
the sudden flurry about the pictures from that?

Oh, the Metropolitan Museum?
you?

Are they still calling

No, they were finally satisfied with a picture of the
White Owl truck. Why they wanted the White Owl truck,
I'll never know. Actually, you see, the pictures that
they picked out seemed to me to be among the poorer
pictures. I had the terrible feeling they were going
to use it for a horrible example, or something.

Did you ever find out Just what they were putting
together?

Not exactly. It was some exhibition about America, I
think to send around to schools. One thing I gathered
was — they said it's very difficult to get pictures
with descriptions of them, which is of course exactly
what I was doing.

A couple of young fellows got a hold of that
book, and wanted to make a movie out of that. They
did quite a bit of work on It for a documentary. But
they didn't come across, finally. They couldn't get
anybody to back them.

Was much of the American Ways of Life written in
response to the questions people in a foreign country
have about America?

I got something out of that, yes. Of course I'd spent
a good deal of time abroad Just recently, before that.
But the idea went back a good deal farther than that.
You see, when I say that my books have been a long
time on the back of the stove, that's pretty true,

•

196

Some of the things,
People's horror, for

Stewart: when you mention various ones,
of course, I got from Greece,
instance, at the idea of drinking milk.

I always felt strange that the book didn't do
better, actually, because I think it's a good book.
Now it's a little bit out of date. Things do move,
and there are a few chapters that ought to be done
over, but I don't want to do them over. The book has
possibilities, though. The anthropologists have not
taken it up as much as I expected. I think it must
have been, again, oversimplification. That seems to
be one of my difficulties.

Bless: By taking it up, do you mean acclaim it, or take issue
with it?

Stewart: Well, no, to maybe use it in courses, or that sort
of thing. Because it really is the anthropology of
a large modern country. It could be called anthropology,

Riess: Did you do much consulting with people in writing it?

Stewart: Well, I did some. I did most of that myself, though,
and largely from my own background.

One of the reasons why it may not have been more
successful was that it represented, in the end, as it
worked out, a rather strong point of view which now
would be called "Wasp"-lsh. I didn't set out to do it
that way. But as I came to sum matters up, I could
come to the conclusion only that a tremendous amount
of what we now think of as being American was
originally English. This is now an unpopular inter
pretation. It is especially unpopular among the
people who do book -re viewing and who do a great deal
of teaching. You are supposed, I think, to emphasize
more the contributions of all the various minorities
and more recent emigrants.

I might as well say something about the Wasp
here since when this may be dug out of the files a
generation in the future people may be interested in
Just that point.* I think it very strange in one
particular. People who would never think of using
what is known as an ethnic derogatory such as "nigger,"
or "Wop," or even "Jew," will go right ahead and use
"Wasp" though that is obviously another ethnic
derogatory. The Wasp Is pictured as stick-in-the-mud,

*"Wasp" means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

197

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

Hiess:
Stewart :

hopelessly reactionary, un-artistic, and living on
peanut butter sandwiches. I am one hundred percent
Wasp myself, and yet I don't particularly fit into
that stereotype. Of course, the whole thing is
"breaking down pretty rapidly in any case. In my old
Wasp family, two people, for instance, are married to
Americans of Italian extraction.

The book had good reviews, but never really
caught on. There was a translation into Japanese,
and perhaps one or two others.

I wrote a good deal of the book while I was in
Athens as Pulbrlght professor at the University of
Athens. That was in 1952-53. One of my duties was
to give a series of public lectures, and I gave them
on this topic. I worked out about six of the chapters
as lectures delivered in Athens.

The State Department took about 1500 copies for
foreign distribution. There was also a paperback
edition, which was usually for sale at airports.

Three books came out that year,
California Trail was one.

The Opening of the

Riess:

Well, that's not really a book, that's that narrative
of Schallenberger plus a rather exhaustive introduction
I wrote for it, and notes. Then there was U.S. 4-0,
and what else?

To California by Covered Wagon.

That's a Juvenile, and the same story as the one on
the California Trail. I worked that story to death,
[laughing] I've written it four or five times. That
little Juvenile is still going.

And nobody else had written it before?

It escaped the historians, you see. The manuscript
came to Bancroft too late. So all he has on it is
long notes. Nobody else ever worked the story out.
People knew it. But it had never been put out in any
form for people to read.

I finally got a copy of the Years of the Cit.7* though
I'm afraid that by the time I read it —

198

Stewart: It will take you a while.

Riess: "Onoe again, in his always incalculable fashion,

George Stewart has selected an ordinary subject and
invested it with pity and terror, and fired it to
incandescence in the crucible of his imagination,"

Stewart: I think I remember that.

Riess: How much of Years of the City is true?

Stewart: Well, I tried not to tie it to any place too particularly.
As I say in the little introductory note, it's obviously
Greek, because it has Greek names in it. It's a Greek
colony. That's a period that interests me very much.
I didn't date it in the story. There's a reference
to only one historical event in the whole thing. So
if you spot that, and date it, why, you'll get the
date. But it actually runs from about ?00 to 500 B.C.

I was trying to do that whole sweep of the novel,
covering that length of time. I guess I told you the
device by which I spread out the time? The different
characters? With the inter-chapters used again to
skip over the time that lies in-between.

There's something about the tragedy of those
Greek colonies. They started out so finely, so many
of them, and they Just seemed to grow old, and the
situation changed. They couldn't meet it, and they
were engulfed by the Carthaginians, or the Romans, or
somebody else. They were lovely places — I suppose
a little provincial, but they must have been quite
fine places. One of "them developed the Eleatic
philosophers. Pythagoras was there. Plato visited
some of the colonies. Herodotus settled in one of
them. It's really a very great tragedy.

Yet I don't want to use the word tragedy, because
in a sense they lived their lives. They're a bit like
human beings. Two hundred years to run is a very
common length, between the founding and the ending.
They're like human beings also in that they have a
definite founding, a definite birth. They kept that
record. In fact, it's my personal theory that the
Roman dating of Urbe Condi ta is really the founding
of Cumae, which is the first Greek colony in Italy,
and would have established some dating.

199

Stewart;

Eiess:
Stewart :
Riess:
Stewart:

They started out, they had a founder, you see,
an official founder. They were founded under the
auspices of the Delphic Oracle, most of them. There
are a lot of analogies with the United States, too.
They had many of the same problems. They had the
natives to contend with. I'd like to write a book on

the Greek colonies, but it's too much of a Job.
got a lot of ideas that nobody has ever used.

I've

They had to have military superiority. This
what the colonists in America had. They had it
through gunpowder largely. I think the Greeks had
it through the invention of the phalanx, heavily armed
men that allowed them to defeat these hill people
without much difficulty. They got some bad defeats
themselves, sometimes. It wasn't always their way.

So I took this city and I started on the day they
land, when the first ship comes ashore. There is an
uninhabited coast there, because the people have been
driven out of the coastal plain by piracy, which
actually happened sometimes. They were living back
in the hills, so the plain was open for anybody who
could take It and hold it. That's where the Greeks
moved In, practically all around the Mediterranean.
Then they built their wall. Until they got their
wall built, they were vulnerable. That was another
thing they did, almost immediately.

Then I traced out the first part, the founding,
as seen through the eyes of the boy. I think on the
whole the book came out pretty well. Of course, it's
never been a popular book, and never will be. It's
too long for most people, for one thing. It doesn't
in an obvious way touch the great ideas of the present
time. Although in a more basic way I think it does.
The question of civilization*

Did you make those speculations in the book, or is it
up to the reader to see the parallels?

No, I didn't express them. They'd have to be seen,
inside.

Do you think that the present-day Greeks have a sense
of this history, themselves?

Oh, some of them do. They're very patriotic, and
very much into that sort of thing. And terribly bored

•

200

Stewart: with it, too, the younger people, because they're

made to take ancient Greek. They look upon that as
a great hardship. They don't want to read Homer.
That's what you would expect, after all.

There's very little record of the Greek colonies.
Thucydides says something about them. On some of the
later colonies, like Syracuse, there's a good deal.
You see, this was a fairly early period I was working
with. There's almost no record of Greeks when you
get back to ?00 B.C.

But I worked in some anecdotes that are preserved
by one person or another — I Just made use of them —
which a classical scholar might recognize, although
they're pretty obscure. There was a very good book
called The Western Greeks by a man named Dunbabin
whom I met at Oxford. That book really did more to
give me ideas and data than any other thing I read.
It's a very moving period. I carried Dunbabin' s book
through Sicily.

And of course I'm a great man on Homer, too. I
get a lot out of Homer. (I read him pretty well in
the original.) I got something out of Homer for this
book.

I also think there's been a lot of nonsense
written about the ancient Greeks. I took that attitude
to some extent in Man. I didn't give the Greeks nearly
as good a hand as most people do. I tried to bring
that out in this book too. Most of the ancient Greeks
were Just ordinary people like us. There were a few
philosophers and poets, but there probably weren't so
very many more than we have, either.

Bless: You don't suggest that they were once a really great
race?

Stewart: Well, they were a great race, but they had their

weaknesses. The very fact that they couldn't survive,
see, was one thing. I suppose in the military sense
they were in an impossible situation, scattered all
around the edge. I think it was Plato who said their
cities were like frogs on the edge of a pool. That's
about the way it was. They had no means of defense,
and they couldn't ever agree among themselves. They
fought each other all the time.

•

(}

201

Stewart: In the end I had my city overthrown by another
city, plus the people from the hills, who start
moving down again. They were more or less like the
Romans. That's an old story. This city, although I
didn't spot it In the book, would be on the Ionian
coast of Italy. I drove along there a couple of times
and placed it in there.

Riess: What are the parallels to the United States?

Stewart: Well, you have a lot of parallels. There's such a

thing as the problem of domestic animals — where do you
get your animals from? That was a big problem,
tremendous problem. I dealt with that in American Ways
of Life in the United States. Greece must have had the
same problem. You couldn't bring very many animals
on the little ships they had in those days. They
could get them from the hill people, probably. That's
what I had them doing in this story. After they fight
their first battle, they make up a treaty with the hill
people, and then they're able to buy animals from them
to get started.

Then the question of the intrusion into a country
where people are living already. You have the military
superiority, but not so much that you can be too
careless about it. You have to defend yourself and
be ready at all times.

And then the general idea of whether a country
does grow old or not, and Just what period we're in
right now, which in a way looks like my third period
coming up.

Riess: It's not that two hundred years is a suggestive period
of time?

Stewart: No, I don't think you could make any comparison there,
as closely as that. I'm not too much convinced of
this idea of a circular pattern of history, anyway.
I don't think that has too much to go on. It happens
sometimes. It did happen in those Greek colonies
pretty often.

Riess: When this book came out, did you have response from
historians?

Stewart: Very little. The book didn't make much impression, no.
The book re-reads very well. I like certain parts of

202

Stewart: it very much, although I find myself avoiding the
third book. I think that the fourth book comes off
very well.

Riess: As we move chronologically through your career in
writing, I wonder if you ever had a fallow period.
There doesn't seem to be one.

Stewart: No, there wasn't very much. I ran a terrific run,

oh, you might say from the beginning of writing novels
up until I wrote Sheep Rock. I never was at a loss
for which way to turn. I always had them sort of
stacked up waiting to get into production. I would
carry one in my mind, saying, "Gee, when can I get
at that? That would be good to work on that one, but
I can't start that one yet, because I've got to finish
this one."

And then, about at Sheep Rock, I came to a sort
of end. It wasn't the same after that. And it
hasn't been, since that time. Of course, U.S. *K)
was a different type of thing. I wanted to do that.
I'd wanted to do it for a long time, but it was a kind
of different thing. It led to N.A. I but that didn't
get anywhere farther than that.

I was very doubtful before I wrote the Years of
the City. I did a lot of thinking about that. I was
very doubtful about taking it up, whether it was the
book I wanted to do. But that was something I hadn't
experienced before.

Also, in Sheep Rook just a little, and then in
Years of the City, I had a certain sense of a flagging
imagination, a little, bit. Things didn't come as
richly as it had at times before. I think that's
basically the reason why I haven't written any more
novels after that. I think a novelist is likely to
reach that stage, and just putting stuff out to put
it out, well, I didn't want to do it. You may feel
that in the Years of the City. Perhaps other people
did too. The whole scheme of the thing I think is
very good, very great, really. But I'm not sure that
the manipulation of it works out all right. There
are some good things in it, but there was that problem.

And as I went along — you'll notice perhaps after
this, of course, there were no more novels. And also—
I think the books have plenty of vigor in them, but

203

Stewart: I don't quite have the feeling of one leading Into

the other. One reason, I think, is I had a definite
feeling I was getting older. That had a curious
effect on ne; I think in one way, that my years are
individually much more valuable. There aren't so
many of them to waste. So I want to feel very sure
that I want to do this book. It made me a little more
almost hesitant to begin writing a book, although
you wouldn't think that particularly from the number
of titles that have come out since, [laughing]

Well, the Gettysburg business was something that
interested me for a long time, again. I had played
with the idea way back in 1938 when I went to teach
at Duke. I stopped off at Gettyburg, and spent a day
wandering around there. I focused on Pickett's
charge, with the idea of doing what I call "micro-
history." That's something that's not been done very
much.

I was trying to get all the Information I could
possibly get on that small bit of history. Of course,
when you get close to it, it doesn't look so small,
because there are a lot of men Involved in it, and
all that. But I think I did what I set out to do all
right there. I think it's a good book.

I had something like ^00 testimonies when I did
that, which I think is perfectly amazing when you think
about it. To think there were 4-00 different people
who wrote — I don't mean they wrote complete stories
of the charge, but there were ^00 people's reports
that you could use, to bear out events one way or
another. I went through them all, and tried to work
out what really happened. Because it's amazing when
you think what's in the books about that charge, and
how much of it's wrong. It's absolutely incredible.
You begin to think, "Well, if the whole Civil War is
as bad as that, we don't know anything about it."
And you begin to think, "What if all history's as bad
as that?"

For Instance, I more or less started out with
the naive idea, "Well, now, I'll get a good account
to start with, and. I'll work on that." Expand it,
you see, and build it up where it needs to be built
up. But where could I get a good account? I couldn't
get any good account to start with at all. There was

;

-
-.*

20*4-

Stewart: nothing I could trust. None of the established
histories. It's very disconcerting.

Take a thing like what time was Pickett's charge;
you'd think that would be a simple thing. But you
have any number — oh, I forget the exact figures, but
the times given range over something like four hours.
It seems just incredible. I finally came to the con
clusion that the time — what are you talking about,
with time? Because there wasn't any standard time
involved. I think the watches in the Confederate
Army were twenty minutes off the watches in the Union
Army, or something like that, [laughter] And then
there was local Gettysburg time. They could actually
hear the town hall clock ring out, on the battlefield,
when they weren't shooting. You'd think that would
tie it up.

I finally got — you Just couldn't take these things
and average them. You had to decide who would know
best. Here some of them were generals, and they
wouldn't agree with the other generals. You would
think they would know a thing like that. I finally
did the best I could. There was a man in Gettysburg
who kept a running account of the battle from what he
could hear, and I went by him finally, because he knew
when the bombardment started. He noted that.

Riess: Did that sort of thing frustrate you or were you Just
finally amused?

Stewart: Oh, it's fascinating. It isn't frustrating, no. It's

fascinating,
somewhere .

You know that there's an answer in there

Another thing is the number of men involved. It's
all off. It's interesting when you find out why it's
off. Because everybody says the Confederates advanced
with 15,000 men. I know where they got that figure,
but it's all wrong. It's what Longstreet says, "That
will give me 15,000 men." Only he says it in another
connection. What he really said was, "If we do this,
I will have 15»000 men;" then they did something quite
different, [laughing] So, the figure has no signifi
cance at all. Actually, in action there were about
10,500 men. I can pretty well prove it, because I've
got every regiment lined up, and know Just about how
many men they had, and I can prove it. Try to see
how much difference it makes. The books will go on

205

Stewart: saying 15,000. This "truth crushed to earth will
rise again," is Just absolutely wrong! Nothing has
the vitality of a well-told lie. [laughing]

Riess: I would think this incorrect history would be
maddening!

Stewart: It's a little bit irritating. You do a lot of good
work on something, and you find nobody paying any
attention to it, keeping on in the same old ruts. I
did the same thing in other books too. In The
California Trail « I took up the question of cholera
in the 184-9 migration. There was some cholera, no
question about that. Bancroft estimates 5000 dead.
That's absolutely ridiculous, and yet I came across
that figure in a new book Just the other day. I had
figured out there might have been 250, something on
that order. Again, if you get down closely — really,
if there had been 5000 dead, I don't think the
migration would have continued. Those are casualties
you Just couldn't stand. Everybody would have been
losing friends and family.

Another thing, in the case of the Donner Party,
was the question where Snyder was killed. Everybody
says he was killed at Gravelly Ford. Gravelly Ford's
a well-known place. And I can tell there too, how
that idea originated, and it's altogether wrong. He
wasn't killed there at all. He couldn't have been,
because if you put the distance they were traveling,
and so forth, and the date he was killed, one thing
and another together, you can pinpoint pretty well
where he was killed, about four or five day's journey
west of Gravelly Ford. Everybody goes on the same
way.*

Hiess: That's interesting.

For Pi oket t * s Charge did you do anything like
write to Saturday Review and say, "I am writing a book
on Pickett's charge — "

Stewart: No, I didn't do that. Maybe I should have. Of course,
I played the official records very carefully. You

*See "Truth Crushed to Earth at Gravelly Ford, Nevada,"
Pacific Spectator, Winter, 1950, IV, i. pp. ^6-4-8.

206

Stewart: know that 200-volume set^ big volumes, the records
of The War of the Rebellion? That's wonderful,
because, you see, they collected and published all
these reports, and they wrote reports down to the
grade of colonel, and for most of the branches clear
down to captain. Lots of the captains In the
artillery had to send In reports. When you put these
all together, you get a pretty good record. Then
there are the big things, like Haskell, who wrote
this long account, the famous account of Pickett's
charge, In which he was Involved very much. The
official records give you the Confederate accounts
also, although some of them are destroyed. Pickett's
own account was destroyed, at Lee's request, because
he thought it would create bad morale in the army.
Apparently Piokett blamed the North Carolina troops.
Pickett wasn't much of a man.

Then there's a lot of miscellaneous stuff. The
regimental histories, for instance. They've published
a great many of them. Sometimes they're very good for
Gettysburg, particularly the history of the 13th
Vermont. They only fought in one battle, so the
historian went to town on it [laughing], and they
happened to be right in the middle of Pickett's
charge. So that's wonderful. And then I went back
to Gettysburg, and worked in Huntington Library also,
and got a great deal out of both of those places.
Huntington Library had bought the big Gettysburg
collection that one of the park superintendents had
put together.

Back at the park itself they have a lot of news
paper accounts, some of them very good, which I
photographed. I set up my own camera and photographed
the stuff. I didn't do a very good Job, but I got it
so I could read it, anyway. That turned up certain
things which you wouldn't ever expect. Like an account
of Sergeant Easley of one of the Virginia regiments
who went over the wall with Arm! stead. He told, all
about it in a very nice fashion. He must have been
a wonderful man. And you can get all sorts of things.
It's very miscellaneous.

The most remarkable thing of all is the trial,
in which the ?2nd Pennsylvania Veterans Association
brought suit against somebody or other, against the
National Park Service I guess, about where the monument
should stand. This was years later, but nonetheless

20?

Stewart: you got marvelous, marvelous, testimony on what
happened, what the individual men went through.
Apparently they didn't keep the laws of evidence
very carefully, but let these old. fellows talk, about
what they remembered about the charge. I had an
awful time getting hold of it, but I finally got it.

Riess: Had you been a Civil War buff, so to speak?

Stewart: Well, to some extent, I suppose. Right now they send
me this Civil War magazine, because I'm on the board
or something. I do read it. I've read a good deal.
I read a lot of the old generals' memoirs many years
ago. They're very interesting.

Riess: Are there people actually working on straightening
out some of the history?

Stewart: Well, I don't know. You see, most of them work on
too big lumps, some way or other.

Another thing I discovered, in working on
Pickett's Charge, is that Pickett's letters are a
fabrication, and they're quoted all the time. His
wife wrote them. He was supposed to have written them
to her, but I'm sure she wrote them and published them.

She was hard up, and then I think also, it was
the glory. She lived on being Pickett's widow, she
lived almost literally on it. She wrote this
sentimental thing called Letters of a Soldier, which
purported to be written by Pickett, during the
Gettysburg campaign. Some of them were supposed to be
written on the battlefield waiting for the order to
charge, which is ridiculous, because he wouldn't have
had any opportunity to write these sentimental letters.
And they're full of all sorts of mistakes. They Just
couldn't be Pickett's.

There are a few of Pickett's letters preserved,
which seem to be genuine. They're entirely different
in style of writing and everything. That's another
reason you can spot the difference.

Riess: Is the handwriting the same?

Stewart: We don't have the originals of any of them. That's

another suspicious feature. If she had these letters,
they would probably be preserved somewhere.

208

Stewart: The confusion of an event like the charge Is
something that you Just can't realize. The troops
were all mixed up. You don't know where they were,
and nobody ever will know, I'm sure. I came across
an account by a Virginia captain of what had happened
to him, and I said, "Oh, the poor guy. He really got
mixed up." [laughter] "No wonder," I said. "There
was a lot of smoke and everything and he didn't know
what was happening. "

And then I came across an account by another
Virginia captain who told the same story, of what
had happened to him. They'd been in the same
regiment, and they got isolated, and they got off by
themselves. They didn't know where they were. They
thought they'd won the battle. They couldn't find
any Yankees to fight any more, [laughter] So I
finally just said, "Well, after all, the two of them
must have been right." I Just had to adjust my ideas
to what they said. I Just worked it out the best I
could, what had happened to them. You can't be too
glib yourself, about what's going to be right.

Riess: Putting together history from oral histories —

Stewart: Well, my theory on this oral history and all these

events recollected so long afterwards, is that they're
pretty good for vivid details, and they're very little
good for ordered accounts, what came after what, and
when, and where, and all those things. They're not
worth much. I've gone through a lot of them, for one
book or another.

I notice in my own case, when I don't tell about
something, when it sits in my own mind, I think it
remains pretty accurate. As soon as I tell about it,
what I remember then is what I told, not what the
original was. What I've written down in my Autobi
ography, I find is lost now, because what I think of
it is what I've written down.

Riess: But the autobiographical stuff you haven't written
before?

Stewart: No, I hadn't written It, but I say, once I wrote it
down, then what I think about is not the original
experience but what I wrote, the words I wrote it
down in pretty much.

209

Stewart: When you think how much history Is dependent upon
the memories of elderly men, who were interviewed or
wrote things down years later, again you Just throw
up your hands. What possibility do we have of these
things being correct?

Riess: But how do you feel when you throw up your hands.
That this isn't important anyway?

Stewart: Well, I think it's important in a sense. Yes.
Riess: Exact history.

Stewart: Well, if it isn't exact, it isn't history, really.
I'm with Harry Truman. I think these things are
important.

Riess: What does Harry Truman say?

Stewart: Well, the reason he figured he was a good president

was that he'd read history. He was a great reader of
history. He said that made all the difference in the
world. And he was one of the greater presidents.
Little man from Kansas City.

Riess: I should think it's important to know history, to have
some history.

Stewart: Well, your ideal should certainly be to have it exact.
When it gets as far off as the difference between
10,500 men and 15,000, that's a big gap.

Riess: In any case, researching Pickett's charge was something
that you really enjoyed.

Stewart: Yes, that was done with great enthusiasm. I had a

lot of fun. And the micro-history is nice to work on.

Then I was approached to do this book on the
California Trail.* I guess I said something about that
the other day. McGraw-Hill was doing this series.
The only book I ever did for a publisher, but it was
my book to start with, anyway. It was a book for which
I had the background. It worked out very well. That

*The California Trail, 1962, The American Trails Series,
McGraw Hill Book Co., Inc.

•

210

Stewart:

Riess:

Stewart :

book has sold quite well. Still is doing very nicely.
It's the best-selling book in that whole series. Of
course that's largely because it deals with California,
and it's a good book for a Christmas present.

Your inter-chapters on "how they did it," "where they
went," — getting the oxen around corners, had anyone
worked that out before?

No, nobody had worked that out. Nobody had worked
out much about the covered wagon, Just what it was
like. I did some work on that. That chapter on the
covered wagon, that inter- chapter, I published
originally in American Heritage, and that got some
award, from somebody or other. I was going to go back
to Oklahoma City in a tuxedo to get the medal or
something, but I got sick and I didn't go. But I got
the — whatever it was — some kind of little statuette.

You see, the trouble with that subject was, it
was as though you did the same thing every year. So
the way I got out of that, I Just told "where they
went" once, you see; after that, I worked out the
varieties of where they went.

Because of my dislike of doing a book in a series
and for a publisher, I might never have done this book
at all if it had not been for Howard Cady, whom I have
mentioned before. He happened to come through when I
was mulling the thing over, and he said, "Well, George,
you'd better do it. Otherwise somebody else will do
it, and you will be awfully mad at what he did."

I had actually been working on the Trail ever
since the time of Ordeal by Hunger, piecing it out
here and there. Of course other people had been working
at it too, and there had been quite a little published
in the interval. Still, the actual routes and the
method of their being opened up was not well known,
and I had a fairly free hand.

Joe Backus (the graduate student with whom I
collaborated on the article on Faulkner), went with
me on an exploring trip over the Trail to see some
parts I had not seen before. We went as far east as
Scott's Bluff, Nebraska.

This book was a very pleasant one to write,
because I was dealing with so much material about

211

Stewart: which I had had a great deal of information for a
long time. These people with whom I was dealing,
for instance, were often men and women with whom I
had been acquainted for many years. I had a problem
with the Dormer Party, because I did not want to
write that story again at length. So I gave a
reference to Ordeal by Hunger, and a very short
summary. I developed a considerable admiration for
Joseph Chiles, and I at first intended to do him as
one of the men in Good Lives. There were difficulties,
however, in getting the materials free to work on.
So I shifted to Bidwell, who was, I think, really, a
much better choice.

I have been particularly pleased with the way I
managed to handle the very complicated story of 184-9 •
That is plenty big enough for a book by itself, and
it has at least one book on it.

I have seriously considered doing another book on
the Trail, or at least on the process of getting across
that part of the world. This would carry the story
from 1859 to 1869, with the completion of the railroad.
I don't think, however, that I will ever do that book.
I have never developed quite a strong enough desire to
do so. The publishers are interested in it all right.

Riess: You mentioned your feeling about writing beginning to
flag, and you becoming dubious. It seems that happens
to other writers. In the Paris Review interviews I
noted people's careers stopped in some cases very
early. Do you think it's the fiction writer who has
this problem particularly? Do poets have it as much?

Stewart: Poets have it even more. Poets are characteristically
young men. Fiction writers are middle-aged men. A
few of them last through indefinitely, but, no, I
think you'll find that's true.

There are a lot of great poets that are very
young, that died young. You don't find novelists like
that, very many. An occasional one like Stephen Crane.
It's a rare novelist who does much before the age of
thirty. Of course, that's hardly middle age, but lots
of poets are finished by that time.

Riess: And then what time was it that you would say you were
finished?

212

Stewart:

Bless:

Stewart:

filess:

Stewart:

Bless:

Well, I would have been about fifty-five,
say, however, I was finished.

I wouldn't

I mean In terms of wanting to write fiction. Isn't
that what you were saying? I felt that you meant
the imagination that applies to fiction and doesn't
apply to other forms of writing.

Well, I was speaking about fiction, yes. I think one
thing I can Illustrate this with is that you have a
certain bag of tricks that you're born with, I suppose.
You develop it to some extent by experience, and then
you start writing, and you use up those ideas. Then
you start repeating yourself, or something like that.
I'm not interested in repeating myself. A lot of people
seem to be able to do it.

One thing that's always fascinated me is the idea,
in modern civilization, if you disappear. People do
every day, of course. What mechanism works? How
are you discovered? How is it discovered that you are
missing. I used that in Storm, you see. There's an
idea which I had in mind for a long time. I didn't
use it in either of those two early novels, but I used
it in Stormt and now I can't go and use it again very
well. That ' s the sort of thing I mean.

Your novels are all so well planned,
your own life?

Did you plan

No, I didn't. I suppose it might have been a good
thing if I had, or could have. But, as I say, I was
so busy with two or three novels stacked up beyond
there that I hadn't had a chance to write yet, that
I didn't plan any farther than that. There are people,
of course, who apparently can plan a great long series
of books, like Snow for instance, and Proust. But I
don't think there are so many who can do that.

That would bore me to death, too. I don't think
I could possibly do a whole long series of novels
like Snow. I want to do something different. You
would get so sick of that, I think, before you got
through. You'd say, "Why did I ever do this?" It
would be like Trollope, who up and killed Mrs. Prouty.
He suddenly realized he was through with her.

Sometimes one reads of a book being the first of a
trilogy, and then the rest of the trilogy doesn't get
completed.

213

Stewart: Well, that's often true. You take C.3. Forester, who
of course was captured by Captain Hornblower and had
to keep on writing things about Hornblower for twenty
or thirty years, and at least always used to say he
hated Hornblower. I don't think he did exactly. He
even wrote a poem about It once. He liked to write
poetry. He wrote this ballade about Hornblower, with
the refrain line, "Because you've been my friend for
twenty years."

But he started to write another series. He wrote
the first book called Randall and the River of Time.
He never wrote a single other book about Randall. He
wasn't very successful, I guess, and Forester said,
"The hell with it. I'm not going to...." But that
was planned originally as a big series. Captain
Hornblower kept on.

Riess : I certainly remember him in the Saturday Evening Post,
and I don't know why I never read them.

Stewart: I think he's mostly a man's writer. There aren't very
many of them, you know. But he was certainly popular.
He was really read all over the world.

Riess: In asking these questions, I guess I am making the

assumption that this was a sad moment when you stopped
writing fiction.

Stewart: No, it wasn't. I didn't come to it that way. When I
finished Years of the City, I still expected to write
more novels. I did try one, a little — it wasn't
exactly a novel. Well, it was too. I never wrote any
of it. I did some work on it. It was too much like
Earth Abides, and I said, "I don't want to do this.
While it's a good story, and it is not the same story
as Earth Abides, still it's much the same situation
involved in it." So I didn't write that one. But don't
write me off entirely.*

Riess: I won't write you off entirely! You Just have such a
big project going in the other room.

*Within a very short time (about two weeks) I suddenly
started dictating what I called The Shakespeare Crisis.
but I had not decided to do so at this time. [G.S.]

Stewart :

Rless:

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

Yes, I do. Maybe that's a mistake,
have some big thing to work on.

But It's nice to

Rless:

Stewart:

You have another room where you could work on a little
project.

I might take It up sometime. There are a couple of
Ideas I have in mind, but this Isn't the time to talk
about It, really.

Okay. Going through your works, we're up to Committee
of Vigilance, and Not So Rich, and Good Lives.

Well, I was terribly sick of course right In the middle
of writing Pickett's Charge. I almost died. And I
think that makes a difference in a man, too. You have
a feeling you've got to keep the chips sort of picked
up a bit. I got over that all right. I had an
operation afterward. A very serious operation. I got
over that, and so I went ahead and finished Piokett's
Charge .

Then I had the California Trail stacked up, and
that was quite a big Job, too. I had a lot of work
to do on that. That, much more than the Years of the
City, is the time where I came to taking stock, again,
you see. About the time I finished the California Trail.
I knew I was getting old. I was approaching retirement.
This business of the years being worth more as you go
along was working on me a bit.

I did begin to think, "Well, how many more books
am I going to do here?"

Did you have thoughts while you were sick, visionary
thoughts?

Oh, not very much. I began to wonder if there was
enough of Pickett's Charge done so it could be published
or not, and I decided there wasn't, so I didn't worry
about that. Let's see, as long as we've got this book
here — [looking in date book] — oh, these years in
here are so filled. I was writing in lots of notes
here at this time. California Trail was 1962. Well,
you see, I was Just on the edge of retirement then. I
guess I was retired before that book came out. And I
was already working on Good Lives by that time.

215

Stewart: In a sense Good Lives was an attempt to sum up
my life, I suppose, and see whether I had been able
to do anything that way, or what was it that the good
life was? These were people who had interested me for
a long time, all of them. That was not a book that
had great commercial possibilities. It's a bad kind
of book to do in many respects, because it means a lot
of work for each man. You do enough work on one man
to write a full length biography, really, and then all
you get out of him is a sixth of a biography. You
never should advise a man to do a book like that.

Riess: You've Just been saying that you did it for yourself,
more or less, it seems.

Stewart: Yes. I did. Yes. So, I did that one. That's a very
satisfactory book to have done. A very nice book to
look back on and read occasionally. I read a section
of it every now and then. And I think it goes all
right. I tried to rescue two or three people from
oblivion that should have been rescued. I don't think
I succeeded very well in rescuing them from oblivion,
because nobody ever reads the book, but there they
are, anyway. It's nice to try to capture a person in
a fairly short space.

They are nice people, most of them, though I
think Schliemann was kind of a stinker, probably.
There again, even what I got out of Schliemann doesn't
correspond to the legend at all. This idea of
Schliemann, the facts are all off in the ordinary
belief about him.

Riess: Who is the legend designed by, then?

Stewart: He designed it for himself. It's mostly his creation.
As far as I know, he was honest in his archaeology,
though I wondered at times. But he was not honest in
his writing about himself, because you can get contem
porary letters that don't coincide at all with his
autobiography. The whole thing was Just wrong. This
business about making money and rushing down to dig
up Troy is all wrong. He spent about fifteen years
Just fooling around, and he had lots of money long
before he ever went near Troy. Just the mere dates
show that.

I had to try to work out what he was, through
that legend. He was a very lucky man. He knew it.

216

Stewart: He admitted it. He believed in that. Luck's a very
interesting thing. Did we take that up?

Riess: No, we didn't. That is. an interesting thing.

Stewart: I don't know anything about it! [laughter] But I
know that both Schliemann, and Bidwell, two men out
of six, actually talked about their luck. They
believed in it. And they both are very remarkable
men. Bidwell at least was an extremely stable, good
man. But two out of six is quite a good ratio. I
don't know what it means.

Riess: Does it sound like it means fate?

Stewart: Well, that doesn't help you any, because you don't
know what fate is. And I'm not sure that I believe
in it, actually, at all. I might use the phrase, but
I think I have a pretty careful apology for it in that
Autobiography. I say, "This Just might be true," or
something of that sort, but I don't think I stick my
neck out.

Oh, I don't know about these things. We had an
interesting talk in our dinner club one night. There
were about eight or ten men there. The conversation
got around to the question of premonitions, and whether
anybody among us had ever had. a premonition. We went
around the group, and several people talked about quite
amazing things they'd had happen, but they'd say, "It
wasn't a premonition, it was Just a coincidence. I
wouldn't say that I had a premonition."

Except one man. What's fascinating about this is
that he's a Highland Scot, and they are supposed to
have second sight, you know. Also this ran in his
family. He quoted things from his mother and grand
mother. He had had two premonitions, which he could
not explain any other way. They both saved his life.
That's a very fascinating thing. I don't know what to
make of that.

Riess: But people are so quick to disbelieve.

Stewart: Well, I think they should be. I don't believe in
premonitions myself.

Hiess: I read your interesting report in one of the cartons
about the strange happenings in your house.

21?

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

Oh, the poltergeist? Yes, that was un-nerving.
[laughter] The thing that got us down, we were looking
for things to happen.

After that, you mean.

Yes. It was un-nervlng. But I'm the last person in
the world to believe in that sort of thing. I'm glad
you read that. I was going to mention that.

You say you're the last person in the world.

Yes. I'm a Lowland Scot, you know. They don't have
it. [laughing]

What is the dinner club you mentioned?

That's a group that was formed about twenty-five years
ago. I haven't been in it quite that long. It's
Just one of these men's clubs, you know, you get
together and eat dinner, and then somebody reads a
paper and you talk about it for a while, and you talk
about a few other things for a while, and then you go
home for the next month. It was largely formed by
lawyers. Haynes, who was dean of the law school at
Berkeley, was one of the original members — he's been
dead for a long time. Ted Meyer, the former regent,
is in it. Several other lawyers. Two others of the
men are from the University; one of them is Charlie
Camp, and the other is Bill Keeler, who was in the Law
School. There are some businessmen, too. It's a
very nice group. I am in three of those things now.

[laughing] One of the ways I'm insuring my
future here is that these will keep on. As you get
older you don't have any more friends after a while,
so if you keep on with something that is continuing,
that's the good life, you see. I'm in the Cosmos Club
on the University campus. That's a very nice group,
quite a large group. They have about seventy members,
I suppose, and those are men that I've known for
years and years, all University people.

It keeps adding new members?

Yes, it does, although they are mostly older people.
There are not many that are really young. I suppose
they are nearly all full professors. And recently,
since I came to the city, I was asked to Join this

218

Stewart: Chit-Chat Club. It*s been going for almost a hundred
years, which is pretty remarkable. It's had some
famous members from the University. It's got Joel
Hildebrand as a member now, and Walter Morris Hart was
a long-time member. It's got a very notable group
of men in it, really, some of them from Stanford, most
of them from San Francisco. I haven't been in that
very long, Just about a year.

These clubs are all the same type. They represent-
I won't say the non-intellectual, but the man who's not
in an intellectual business — they represent his attempt
to express himself intellectually, and I think it's
very good. These lawyers, you know, they certainly use
their brains, but they have to work at a different kind
of thing, they don't get any kind of really free
Intellectual work. I think that's what these groups
represent, more than the social. The social is very
pleasant that way, but it's not social primarily, as
the Bohemian Club is for instance. In the Kosmos Club
you hardly ever have to read a paper, because there
are so many people in it; in this other group I'm in
there are only about eleven or twelve, so your number
comes up about once a year.

Riess: What have some of your papers been?

Stewart: Well, as a matter of fact I read a lot of selections

out of my books as they came along. The first thing I
ever read was the article on names which I published
in the Encyclopedia Britannioa. I read stuff out of
tne Vigilante book, and out of the N.A.I, Piokett's
Charge • practically every book that came along I read
a selection out of. It was pretty easy for me, after
all. I didn't have to get involved much in writing
anything special.

Bless: It sounds pleasant, and very much a men's thing.

Stewart: Yes, it is. I think it's a characteristic men's

activity in this country, and I think a study of it
would be fascinating, a sort of sociological study.
J.P. Marquand has a very amusing chapter on a meeting
of a men's club in one of his books, and it sounds
like all the rest of them. I may be wrong, but I
think there are a lot of them scattered around. I
think you would find one in every university in the
country, and probably one or several in every good-
sized city. This one here that's been going on for

219

Stewart: Just about a hundred years is remarkable. Usually

they have a certain life, then they degenerate, like
a city.

Riess: That ijs remarkable. Do they have a history?

Stewart: The Chit-Chat Club is going to have something in

relation to the 100th anniversary, which is coming up.

Riess: Do they have minutes?

Stewart: I don't know how much they have, because I'm Just a

newcomer in that club. One formerly well-known figure
in the University lost the minutes of the Kosmos Club
and was persona non grata ever after. Some people
take these things very seriously. Even this' little
group I belong to has saved all its papers. They've
got an archivist. Charlie Camp is the archivist; he's
a natural archivist. I guess they've got a couple of
hundred pounds of papers now, I would say, Just in
physical mass. They'll probably leave it to the
Bancroft Library someday.

The funniest group I ever belonged to, though, was
the Armchair Strategists. We used to meet during the
war. That had some interesting people in it, Cecil
Forester, Joe Jackson, and Charlie Camp were in that.
I organized that one. We used to meet once a month,
in the usual fashion. That was during the war, you
couldn't do much, we'd usually get a little beer to
drink, or something like that. We had only half a
dozen in that, and the idea of this was to indulge in
prophecy. One man had to write a prophecy each month
and deposit it, prophesying what was going to happen
in the war the next month. Then when the month had
rolled away we'd have the meeting and we'd read the
prophecy and see what happened, and we'd have a lot of
discussion on war. It was obviously a war club, and
we had a very good time with that. And it was
interesting, the thing Just died out after the war was
over. We didn't make any effort to keep it going.*

*We started with six members: J.H. Osmer (Standard Oil,
a Princeton classmate). C.D. Brenner (professor of
French), Charlie Camp (professor of palaeontology,
historian), Joseph Henry Jackson (book-editor, S.F.
Chronicle). C.S. Forester (novelist), G.R.S. We added
later, Reid Rallton (engineer), Ronald Walpole (professor
of French). [G.S.]

•

220

Stewart:

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

There is Stewart's Law about clubs and organiza
tions, and that is that they always degenerate, and
the reason they degenerate is that they started out
with a good group, you see, or you wouldn't start at
all, and then eventually they got bores in them —
somebody wants a friend in and this friend's a bore,
or something like that, or disagreeable — and eventually
the bores take over. The good men gradually get to
doing something else and drop out, and eventually
there's nothing left but a lot of bores, and they can't

stand each other, and so the thing disappears,
progression.

Natural

I would never have thought of you having yourself so
spread out.

Well, I'm spread a little bit more now; this is all
in the latter part of my life, really, although I
belonged to two others of these, which became extinct,
I think for the reasons that I outlined there. But
this is the first time I ever started doubling or
tripling on the matter. I organized two of these
discussion groups when I was president of the Faculty
Club, but neither of them took on permanently. I
thought there was a chance for them; they both started
out boldly, but neither of them took on, for some
reason or other.

We have often spoken of old age as a topic for inter
viewing, and I have a hard time putting together
questions for you about it. It's almost as if old age
is unspeakable.

It isn't at all for me. [laughing] You could say
"aging," that's the euphemism for it. "Aging." I
really laugh at that one around here. [The Sequoias]

Is it a subject that is talked about, for instance at
your clubs?

No, I don't think it is. I think it's shunned generally,
I think it is, and I think that's too bad, really,
because I think you ought to be able to play old age
as you can play any other part of life. There ought
to be some way you can handle it, things you can do,
things you can't.

I'm getting along very well, on the whole. I
think it's partly that I have looked ahead. I don't

221

Stewart: think you can ignore the years. On the other hand,
you shouldn't give in to them either. I learned
that quite a while ago, because there were several
times when I didn't feel well for some reason or
other, and I thought, "Oh, well, I'm getting old."
But then I'd go to the doctor sooner or later, and
he'd always find something the matter with me; I
wasn't old at all. [laughter] There was really some
thing the matter with me. So that taught me something.
You shouldn't Just say, "Well, I'm getting old," you
should do something about it.

Of course eventually you will get old. I did go
to a doctor another time. I had a neck which bothered
me because I couldn't look around easily to see whether
a car was coming from the side or not, dangerous. I
went to the doctor, and told him about it, and said,
"Can I can get some exercises that will give me more
play in my neck?" And he said, "No, you can't. You
start doing that, and you will create more problems
than you have. You'll throw something off if you
start taking exercises, so all you can do is Just get
old." So now I use the rear-view mirror more.

Riess: If you proposed old-age as the topic of conversation
in these groups, what do you think people's feeling
would be.

Stewart: I think it would be fine. I think they'd be interested
in discussing the matter. And I think it might be an
interesting thing to do. There is very little writing
about old age, surprisingly little, and there aren't
very many old characters in works of literature, really.
King Lear, of course, but he doesn't make a very good
case for it. There is an essay by Cicero, which I've
never read — Cicero has always bored me — but I will
have to read him sometime and. see what he says about
it. So there isn't much to turn to.

Of course the situation at the present time is
a somewhat curious one because there are too many old
people. That is, they've become too common. They've
lost their rarity value. They used to be cherished,
to some extent, but they are not cherished anymore.
And I think it is because there are too many of them.
You have to make ninety now before anybody considers
you really old, which is good in a way, and bad in
another way.

222

Stewart: Did you see the write-up of Joel Hildebrand this
morning? [San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 26, 1971]
I'm swinging a birthday party for Joel at the Faculty
Club at luncheon on his birthday, the 16th of November.
I've become quite a swinger of parties lately. We're
going to have some champagne — Just a moment's pause
in a busy day. Now, he * s a remarkable man. He's the
one who never really has grown old. Of course you
can't always do that. He's had the reliable body
combined with the reliable mind, and that's not too
easy, that's luck if you get them both that way.

Riess: Do you think the reason it is not talked about much
is that it would mean facing unpleasant things, or
what?

Stewart: I think it's a throw-back from a fear of death. I

think when people say old age, then the next thing is
death, and they don't like to talk about death, and
what that means, and I think old age gets in under the
same heading. Don't you think that's a possibility?
People talk about their complaints a lot; they talk
about all their diseases and operations and troubles,
but they never talk about that in relation to death.

Riess: Because that's life.

Stewart: And yet it's also death in many instances, because
what they have is probably going to kill them
eventually.

I think that's one of the reasons I don't mind
being here. I think a lot of people think this [The
Sequoias] is a kind of a stopping-station on the way
to death, but then so is every place else. You get
to be my age, you get deaths all the time. It's very
disconcerting, and it's disconcerting also in thinking
of the future, because you get more and more lonely
as you go along.

This year has been an extremely bad year for us;
we lost a whole group of people. Not family and not
people we knew very intimately, but people we've known
for a long time. It's bound to happen. It won't
always be as bad a year as this — the last three or
four months, actually. These things come in waves.
You can't do anything about it. I was impressed with
Walter Morris Hart in that respect, whom I used to go

223

Stewart: see occasionally when he was past ninety. And he
didn't have anybody left, you know. His wife was
dead, his sister was dead, and his friends were all
dead, and he had had no children. It wasn't that Jig.
had changed; he had Just lived, that's all he'd done.
And nobody was left. I've been very fortunate in
some respects. Most of my friends are younger than
I am — not really young, but a good deal younger than
I am.

Riess: You said in writing about Hart in the department
history that although he had the friends and the
social life and the luxurious existence, that "there
was no center to it." What did you mean by that
phrase?

Stewart: I suppose what I would say is that he didn't have any
dominating passion any more, that old phrase.

224

INTERVIEW VIII, The Shakespeare Crisis; influences
of California and the West; the Bancroft Library;
oral history; literary influences; Not So Rich as
You Think; presses; Ha good life"; the Book.
(Recorded February 2, 1972)

(continuing a conversation about George Stewart's
work in progress)

Hiess: When you can't go to sleep at night, because you're so
preoccupied, do you get up in the morning and write
something down quickly?

Stewart: No, I don't. I figure if I can't remember it, it

probably isn't worth remembering. I've always worked
on that principle. I don't think I've ever lost any
thing of great importance.

I had an invasion of the library last night.*
(This is right in your line.) A bunch of rioters
tried to get in and destroy the card catalog. All
the catalogers came up from the bowels of the earth,
and fought them off. I had a wonderful scene going
there. I think I'll use that.

Riess: That sounds timely.

Stewart: Well, not exactly. Things have been pretty quiet

lately. But I like the idea of the catalogers turning
into furies, and defending their sacred realm.

Riess: I think I'll get into my odd lot of questions. They
probably are not "where you're at," as the expression
goes, at all.

*By now G.R.S. was dictating The Shakespeare Crisis.

225

Stewart: Well, I can probably adjust.

Riess: Do you think there are parallels between research,
as you do it for your books, and the excitement of
discovery?

Stewart: Yes, I think so. Very strongly.

Riess: [laughing] That question shouldn't Just end there.

Stewart: You should say, "In what way do you think so?" Well,
it is the interest of discovery. I think it's pretty
much the same thing, uncovering certain materials
which at least were not known to the person doing them.
It may not be original. I mean, somebody else may
have known these things before. Still, from the point
of view of the person doing it, it's something new.
Some of those things that I have discovered in working
with my books would have that for me, the same as an
actual research problem might have.

I've got some examples here right now. I've
been doing a research Job on the organization of this
retirement home. [The Sequoias] I guess I told you
about that. Maybe I didn't.

Riess: You said you'd been going into the financial matters.

Stewart: Yes, I've gone through all that. That's a discovery,
of research.

And then in this book I've been working on now,
the novel, I've had an interesting time, because I've
made a few discoveries of my own in connection with
the fact that Shakespeare was written by Marlowe.
That's the way the book starts out, you know. A man
working on that. And I discovered some wonderful
arguments in reading the Taming of the Shrew, which
I decided was the key work for this Job. Of course,
I don't believe any of this, but this is Just what
would be a nice argument if you were believing it.

Riess: But I was speculating that discovery through library
and research materials was the only kind of discovery
that was possible now in the West.

Stewart: Well, if you take it in the sense of the older West,

that's obviously true. Because nobody is left to get it

226

Stewart:
Riess:

Stewart :
Rless:

Stewart:

from orally,
around.

There's not very much tradition left

Riess:
Stewart :

Rless:

Stewart :
Riess:

What if you really had trailbreaking blood in your
veins, where would you go, if you really were an
adventurer?

I suppose you'd have to go into Outer Space.

If you settled in another part of the United States,
what do you think you might have done with —

I think every part of the United States has a good deal
of the same sort of thing we work with in the West. If
one had any reason why he was bound to work upon local
history, I think he could get pretty good material
anywhere. It's still a fairly open field. Take any
state, and I think you'd find something of that sort.

I think of living in the heart of New York City. You
can't even see grass and have that sense of digging.

Oh, New York City has a magnificent background. A
good deal of documentary material too. There are all
sorts of things in New York City which you could make
use of.

You know, there was one of the worst — I can't
say exactly witchcraft scares, but it was the same
sort of thing — in New York City. It was a place
where you had hysteria and they hanged a lot of people.
A most colorful, horrible story, actually. How many
people know about that? New York is full of fascinating
material. And you can still see the same locations.
Of course, they're all covered with high buildings,
and asphalt, but it's there Just the same. The whole
line of Broadway, you know, is Just the old road that
went up to the farms in the north of the island. The
very street pattern of New York is interesting.

Yes. I was thinking of really the westward expansion
thing, the blue Pacific, and more the environmental
thing.

Well, you get that in the East too, very much.
But would one still?

22?

Stewart: I think so. It's not exhausted. The idea I've had

for a long time, that I'll never do, is in connection
with the Leather-stocking Tales. Writing the back
ground of that, as part of the biography of Natty
Bumppo. Working out the background — assuming that
Cooper Just tried to develop a fictional story about
this actual man. You could work out a marvelous
story of Natty Bumppo.

But I've never been in that area, you see, except
as a child, and if I'd lived back in New York or
Pennsylvania I could have done that.

Riess: Yes, I think you could have. How about Seelye's

comment, that he thinks you believe, as he does, that
"as California goes, for better or worse, soon enough
will go the nation. "*

Stewart: Yes, I think so. But the same thing could be said

about practically any state in the Union, [laughing]
They're all going to go to hell together.

Riess: I see! Okay. You know what I was getting at in all

these questions, and you're saying it isn't true; that
there's not something special about California.

Stewart: Yes, I think I was saying that. Yes, I think you can
get it anywhere. What is it that Stevenson said, you
know, it's a marvelous line when he came West: "Not
Troy but Homer is lacking." That's not an exact
quotation but that's the idea of it. The story was
there, but nobody had written it yet.

Riess: How did your involvement with the Regional Cultural
History Project start? You were on a committee back
in 1955-

Stewart: Well, I was, way back before that. In 19^5 I was

chairman of the library committee at Berkeley, and I
raised the question then, and had this idea we should
do this. Then I didn't push it through. The library
didn't actually do anything. But I guess when Jim
Hart was chairman of the library committee he revived

*John Seelye, "Placing Names and Naming Places," New
Republic, Feb. 13, 1971.

228

Stewart: this Idea of oral history. So In that sense I am a
father or grandfather or something of the whole
movement, because my proposal actually preceded the
whole activity at Columbia. I did take an action, and
I suppose you'll find it In the minutes of the committee.
I know Don Coney Investigated once, and he thought
that we at Berkeley had a kind of priority on the
basis of that action.

Really, you see, my Idea was a kind of revival
of Bancroft. Hubert Howe Bancroft was one of the few
people in history who created his documents. And
that's what we're really doing here, creating our
documents. We aren't creating history but we are
creating a record of it.

Riess: Actually we were interested in putting together some
of the history of the Bancroft Library. Would you
have some comments on working with the staff and the
library over the years?

Stewart: I first used the Bancroft Library in 1919-20 when I
was working on my master's thesis. I had discovered
that Stevenson had written something for the local
Monterey paper, and I was surprised to find that the
Bancroft had a file of that paper. I remember that
Professor Bolton himself told me so. I don't know why
he was concerned with it, except that I was taking a
course with him, and probably I asked him or commented
about it. That was the first discovery of this kind
I ever made, and I was delighted to demonstrate the
authorship of the article, even though it was not
signed, by work on internal evidence. It was the
article with the title "San Carlos Day," which I
re-published in the Scribner's magazine. Although I
had sold a few humorous verses to magazines, this was
the first what you might call serious publication that
I did in a professional way.

The Bancroft at that time was where the map room
now is. I came back to the campus in 1923 and immediately
started working on that big cultural history of
California of which I have already spoken here some
where. I used the Bancroft a great deal from that time
on for several years. By 1923 it had moved to the
fourth floor of the library, and Priestley had taken
over as director, although Bolton was still very much
in evidence. I always had extremely pleasant relation
ships with both of them. Other old-time members of the

229

Stewart: staff, with whom I was friendly, were Hill, Eleanor
Bancroft, and Edna Martin, who has been Mrs. Parrott
for a long time. I continued working a good deal at
the Bancroft for a number of years, while I was working
on Bret Harte. Phoenix, and Ordeal by Hunger. I even
used, the Bancroft a good deal in connection with East
of the Giants. After that my connection with the
library became spotty. In writing my novels, except
for Sheep Rock, I was not very much in the field of
the Bancroft, and there would be months when I was not
near the place. But I found myself always coming
back for something or other, as when I worked on The
Opening of the California Trail. (Prom my bibliography
you can spot Just about when I would have been working
there . )

I also had other connections with the library.
I was on several committees that dealt with it,
including the one that recommended George Hammond for
director.

One of these committees turned out to be rather
crucial for the library. The professors who were
interested in Latin-American affairs wanted to extend
the field of the Bancroft to cover all of Latin
America. On the other hand, others of us felt that
this would be a dilution, and would not allow the
Bancroft to be good in its field. This turned into a
very hot argument for several months, but in the end,
and I think wisely, the field was not extended.

I was also on a committee which dealt with the
Oral History Project in Its early stages. As for the
Friends of the Bancroft Library, I was at the original
luncheon where it or they were started. As I seem to
remember, Francis Farquhar had a little money from the
Bender estate which he put into getting the thing going.
I was not a member of the Friends of the Library,
however, for a long time, because I felt that it was
not really an organization which included professors.
I Joined it finally, and I have served two terms on
the Council.

My active participation in the library now is
confined to binding books one hour and a half a week
with Harry Roberts. I also bring some of the not-too-
valuable books home with me and repair them in my
bindery here.

•

230

Stewart: As you should be able to see from this account,
my relationship with the Bancroft over many years
has been a very happy one. I am unlikely, now, to
take up a topic of research which will lead me to
spend much time in the Bancroft. I have, however,
said Just about that several other times, and have
always ended by coming back on some subject. So,
possibly, it may happen again.

By the way, I had an interesting comment about
this oral history project, which I think I should get
down somewhere, from Bwald Grether. (He's a retired
dean of business administration. ) He had read the
record of Ira Cross, in economics, past ninety years
old. Grether said, "what's the use of all this stuff,
anyway, because there are so many errors in Ira's
record that there's no use having it?" I pointed out
to him that that in a sense is what's important.
Getting the opinions. Nobody in his right mind will
take these things as factual records of history, unless
he's Just forced, with nothing else to work on. Because
anybody knows that reminiscences taken thirty or forty
years after the event are not really trustworthy. What
they are useful for, Is to give attitudes, and things
that never get into the record. A documentary record
of times and places Just isn't very good. You certainly
want to be as correct as you can, but I don't think
that's the criterion. Particularly in a man like Ira
Cross, who is a man of quite violent opinions.

Riess: Sometimes the interviewer ends up being the historian.

Stewart: Well, it depends of course what kind of life the

person being interviewed has lived, what his contribu
tion to the world has been, naturally.

Riess: Whether it's their attitudes that are going to be
important —

Stewart: Or Just what they're going to say and. what's important
in their lives. I don't think it should be the second
time recording of stuff which is already in the record.
I think that's Just a waste of time. The original
record is much more complete.

Riess: Very often it's, "Why did you vote for something-or-other
in

Stewart: That's all right, because that's probably not in the
record.

231

Riess: But your 1970 attitude may be different about It
anyway.

Stewart: Oh yes, Indeed.

Riess: I have dipped into the question with you of what
books were favorites, what books were influences.
You didn't really indulge me very much in that. I
thought I'd try again; maybe a way of looking at it
would be, what books did you Insist that your children
read?

Stewart: I didn't push my children around very much that way.
My daughter read a good deal. My son didn't read at
all, until he got to college. He didn't read much
then. He never has been a great reader. I couldn't
push him at all. I don't know that I gave my daughter
enough direction, but she was a reader, and she chose
a good deal on herself. I didn't worry about what she
was doing.

I find it difficult to answer a question like
that, because of course I have read so tremendously.
Naturally, it was my profession. And since I was a
reader anyway, to try to pick out what books have
influenced me is difficult, because of the tremendous
number.

Riess: I thought if I just asked you enough times, all of a
sudden some books would just pop to the top.

Stewart: I did answer to some extent didn't I?

Riess: Yes, you named Herodotus and older histories, and

Rless:

Riess:

232

said that you liked, certain kinds of current histories,
like the Titanic,*

Stewart: Yes. Yes. That's partly technical interest in the
way it's done. I mentioned Hardy's Dynasts, didn't
I?

No, but Jim Hart did.

Stewart: Well, actually I think that's mentioned in that
introduction to Storm that I wrote for Modern
Libraries.

I haven't read it for years, but it has an
influence on Storm. And of course the King James
Bible has had a tremendous influence on me. Tremendous,
Even in this present novel I'm working on now, I
suddenly found myself talking about somebody walking
up and down and I realize that's out of the Book of
Job. It's what Satan does, you see. The Lord asks
him what he's been doing, and he says that he's been
walking "to and fro in the earth." [laughing] Then
I realized this character I've been working with was
a Satanic character. That's quite an interesting
psychological point there. And I found him later on,
having made an agreement with somebody, he says, "Of
course it isn't necessary to sign this in blood." That
isn't out of the Bible, but that's the tradition of
Satan anyway.

Shakespeare has had a good deal of influence on
me, for instance, in Fire. A friend of mind, a
Shakespearean authority (Bert Evans, who retired
recently) said, "Well, you've got a whole series of

* I would start with Herodotus, I think. I really like
Herodotus. He had real charm. ..I like these modern
things, like Lord, you know. His one on the Titanic
and the one on Midway, and books of that sortT That's
a kind of genre which has grown up in the last twenty-
five years or so, to which I have contributed myself
to some extent. But I like that kind of story. And

ve read practically everything that was ever written
>n the Battle of the Bulge, among other things. That's
an Interesting, complicated story, an ecological unit
in itself, with everything tying in together." G.S.—
earlier interview.

233

Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart:

things out of Shakespeare In that book." I couldn't
think of anything very much. He couldn't pinpoint it,
but he is a man who knows his Shakespeare very well,
and he said there was a whole series. The only thing
he mentioned was the fact that the fire boss goes
around and visits the camps after dark. He said,
That's right out of Henry V. " [laughing] But I think
that's carrying the influences too far. I said, "Oh,
that's crazy. That's Just what any good fire boss
would do."

So it's not an influence of style, it's an influence
of material?

I think more influence of material. There's a good
deal of Shakespeare in a good many of my books. This
one I'm working on now is really tied up with
Shakespeare very much.

I spoke of Kipling didn't I?
a child.

And G.A. Henty, as

You spoke of him, and I wondered whether that was Just
a childhood influence.

Well, I don't think you ever get over your childhood
influences, do you?

I hope I've gotten over the Bobbsey Twins, [laughing]

I rejected Horatio Alger. I noticed in Newsweek he's
Just been shown to be a homosexual, so I used good
Judgement, [laughter] There's a lot of interest in
boys that run through his novels, that has apparently
a double sense to it. Anyway I never got interested
in him very much, compared with Henty.

You take other things. As I say, I've read too
many things. I pick up something here probably,
something there probably, but if you take people —
Dickens, for instance — Dickens never had much influence
on me. I've read nearly all of Dickens, some of it
two or three times, but I don't think it's had any
serious influence on me.

The contemporary poet that had the most influence
upon me is Archibald MacLeish, who fascinates me. I
don't think you'd probably find very much direct

•

Stewart: influence on my writing, but there's something about
his style which may have influenced me a good deal.

files s: What was it about The Dynasts?

Stewart: I think it was in the first place the idea of with
drawing into the sky, seeing things in the big sense,
which I used in the opening of Ordeal by Hunger. I
actually referred to Hardy at that point, but somebody
told me that's foolish to do that. I think he was
right, so I out it out. That influence is also very
strongly evidenced in Storm. I think spread over that,
to show not only that you could take in vast amounts
of space, but also that you could take in vast amounts
of time, if you tried. Space and time are infinitely
expandable and contract able.

Rless: What was Hardy's attitude when he did it?

Stewart: Well, I'm hardly ready to pass an examination on
Hardy because I haven't read The Dynasts recently
enough. But he's dealing with the Napoleonic campaigns,
and he'll describe the whole army, you'll see the whole
army on the march along the road. He's drawing far
enough away so that he sees the whole thing at one
glance.

Riess: But this was a play, wasn't it?

Stewart: It was a theoretical play. It was never enacted as

a play. There are lots of things that would be quite
impossible to represent on the stage. I must read
that again, as a matter of fact. It's a book which
has not held its place. It isn't read much any more,
I don't think.

It's funny, you see, when I wrote that passage
in Ordeal by Hunger, back in the middle thirties,
nobody had ever done that. Now, of course, being up
two or three hundred miles in the air is quite
commonplace. That's an interesting point.

Riess: Yes, how could you have known what it was like?

Stewart: I didn't. I'm not sure I was right, but it was a good
literary device, to describe the whole trail, you see.
To see it as the only mark upon the land at that time.

•

235

Riess: Are there any books of your own that you wish you
hadn't written?

Stewart: Well, not exactly. There are some books which were
hardly worth while writing. I mean they haven't
circulated enough to be of any Interest to people
much. I don't think there's any book I wish I hadn't
written in the sense that I think it's a bad book,
that it's a vicious book, or anything like that.

Rless: Or that you wish no one would associate with your
name.

Stewart: No, no, some of the books that are read least I

appreciate very much when somebody does read them.
Every now and then somebody does and likes one of
those books very much, which is nice.

Riess: Some people — me — when they see their writing, or hear
it read aloud, experience great distress, sort of
mal de mer. Do you know that feeling?

Stewart: Well, no, I'm usually pleased with my books when I
reread them. I don't often hear anybody read them
aloud.

Riess: Can you remember when you were Just starting?

Stewart: No, no, I really can't. I read a lot of my Bret Harte
book here the other night. I had some reason to get
started reading it. And that was the first real book
I did and I thought that went all right.

Riess: How about reading old letters?

Stewart: Oh, they are terrible. I never was a letter-writer.
I would probably be very embarrassed at some of them.
But that's a little different. And I'm going to have
to reread a lot. I've got a whole stack of postcards
that I sent back to my father and mother when I was
bicycling over Europe. More or less to keep a record,
I usually wrote them a postcard every day. And they
kept them, so I have a pretty good record of the whole
trip. I'll have to take a look at them sometime. I
don't have very many letters that I wrote, I'm happy
to say.

Riess: Of course postcards are an exercise in condensation.

•

236

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart!

Hless:

Stewart ;

Yes, they don't say very much, but you can send back
a picture of something you saw, and that's a record
in itself.

Do you have any old poetry that you wish you hadn't
written?

No, I don't know whether I have a file of poetry of
mine anymore. I had, for a long time, some poems.
I don't think there was anything I would be really
ashamed of now.

Oh, not shame. I was thinking that this feeling might
be the difference between the way the professional
relates to what he's written, and the amateur.

Well, I was really surprised at that Bret Harte book.
As I say, I read maybe 75 pages of it, and it was all
right. I don't know how I learned to do it that well
that soon. I remember somebody saying at the time,
somebody I didn't know at all, who had read the book,
saying, that I was a man to watch. And that intrigued
me very much — of course it pleased me very much. How
she had that insight, I don't know. Maybe it was
better written than most books. It isn't perfectly
written; I mean, I would, change certain things about
it if I did it today. But it wouldn't necessarily be
right, of course. That's another thing you have to
remember. Sometimes you're better when you're young
than when you're old, although you always think you're
better when you're old.

What if East of the Giants had been your first book?
Do you think it might have been a more difficult first
book, and the one that might have shown the novice?

I don't know exactly how to answer. That in a sense
was a documentary book, too, because it was written
against the background of that time, the way a person
of that character would have reacted to the situation
at that time. That's a thoroughly objective book,
and of course I think it was a very good idea to make
it about a woman, because that makes you get out of
your own personality.

Riess: So you never did the traditional first novel, about
one's own life experiences.

•

237

Stewart: No. There's a lot of my life tied up in various of
those books, but there's nothing definitely auto
biographical. I suppose Ish in Earth Abides is the
most autobiographical character. I think there's
a good deal of autobiographical reference there. I
used it more or less consciously. I mean, "How
would I react to something like that?"

Riess: You would have enjoyed the opportunity to start the
world over again.

Stewart: Oh, probably. That's a very common fantasy. I wasn't
thinking of that so much, though, as I was thinking
of the way he goes about things, and a certain sense
of his own incapacities which I think is pretty common.
A lot of people have that feeling.

Riess: How about in your current book? Are you there?

Stewart: I have one character in this book who has some

qualities of mine. I wouldn't say he was particularly
autobiographical. In fact I'm actually thinking of
another man I once knew very much in this character,
although he isn't too much like that man either. My
characters get worked out; they're all sorts of
different people strung together.

Riess: To complete our running account of your books, we need
to talk about Not So Rich.

Stewart: That was a book where I Jumped the gun. I came out

with that before people were really interested in the
subject. The book, in a sense, misfired, because
people were not much interested in the topic yet. If
it had come out about two years later I'd have done
Just fine. But that's one of the disadvantages of
being ahead of your time. I think I said in the
introduction to that book, or somewhere, that it worked
out of the influence of two people, both of them
engineers. One was Professor Boelter at UCLA, who
wrote me a letter and gave me a suggestion about doing
it. The other was George Maslach, who's the dean of
the College of Engineering at Berkeley, who definitely
suggested that I do that book, and gave me the very
important document, the report of the commission on
which he's worked for the President, which was my
chief source book, and which was new at that time, and
a very valuable piece of work. And of course it's

•

•
- . .

•

238

Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart:

Rless:
Stewart :

HI ess:
Stewart :

Rless:
Stewart :

been a thing I've been Interested In for a long time,
and I apparently saw the crisis a little bit ahead of
other people In general.

These men thought that a book such as this would stir
the public.

Yes, I think so, and of course It did to some extent.
I can remember one reference to it by a reviewer who
said it was minor muckraking, which it seems to me
is an amazing thing that couldn't possibly be said a
year or two later.

Since then how involved have you been in the ecology
movement and issues?

I really haven't been very much. I send a little bit
of money to a lot of these things, you know, but I'm
not really a man who works with committees and. movements
and that sort of thing. I don't get into that very
much.

You say that book was two years too early,
you think finally rouses people?

What do

Oh, I don't know in that particular case. Of course,
things were getting worse and worse and they did
arrive at the — well, you can't say crisis, because
we may not be at the crisis yet — but they got to the
point where people became interested. And then it got
to be an emotional campaign, particularly among the
young. And it's a very good thing too. But I can't
say Just what caused it.

How about population control?
you've thought about?

Has that been something

I've been very much interested in that for many years,
too, yes.

Have you ever thought of doing any writing about It?

Not seriously. It's a. pretty technical problem, and
there has been a good deal written about it.

I mean in your special fictional vein.

I never had any inspiration, so to speak, on that
subject. I've never seen anything I could do to

239

Stewart: approach It, although I have been interested for a

long time. It's always seemed to me to be the basic
problem of modern civilization, even more than
pollution, because of course the population problem
Is one of the chief factors of pollution.

Riess: You might write about what happens on the day of the
real crisis.

Stewart: Well, you get into science fiction there, and I never
got into that very much.

Riess: I'd like to know what your experience with private
presses has been.

Stewart: I've really have very little experience with private
presses. I've published two or three things that
way, usually with the Book Club of California, which
handles all the press work and that sort of thing
anyway.

Riess: You had something printed by the Grabhorns, the Colt
Press.

Stewart: Yes, the Colt Press. That was Jane Grabhorn who had
that, and it wasn't published under the Grabhorn
imprint. I wasn't really involved with it very much.
They Just took it and printed it. Incidentally, they
printed too many, and it's been a kind of drug on the
market for a good many years, although now I think
it's a book which has some value because the supply
has been exhausted. But I really had almost no direct
experience with any kind of private press. In fact,
on the whole I've kept away from them, perhaps again
being something of a professional.

Riess: How does that follow?

Stewart: Generally speaking, you don't publish with a private
press if you can get a national publication. Private

2*4-0

Stewart: presses publish specialized kinds of material, usually
short things and in small editions. They have their
place, but it was not the sort of thing that I was
ever primarily interested in, as Jim Hart, for instance,
has a tremendous interest in it.

Riess: What about the pleasure of seeing your words printed
in such a fancy fashion?

Stewart: I don't feel that very much. I think it's the other
way around, really. Of course some books can be so
badly printed that they are a pain to read. On the
other hand, when the printing itself becomes the chief
way of Judging the book, I don't like it. It seems to
me it takes away from what I've written.

Riess: We've talked about the importance of significant

divisions of chapters, etc. It seems to me a private
press could really do this up. When you are dealing
with a commercial publisher, oan you indicate that you
want this?

Stewart: Well, you might, if there was something that you

wanted very badly, yes, and if you had a good relation
ship with your publisher. Generally speaking, you can
trust the modern American publishers pretty well, since
about the 1920s, when Alfred Knopf made the business
over, and Random House followed. You get a very nice
book done by commercial publishers, almost without
exception. Even the second-string publishers do very
nice books.

Riess: The person who designs a book, does he read it through
to know it?

Stewart: I think sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't.
I don't know. Sometimes you can't tell. They can
make bad mistakes. I think, on the other hand, there
are good ones and bad ones. Book design — you're
probably thinking of the Jacket, rather than the
design.

Riess: I was thinking then of initial letters in chapters,
and how far down the chapter begins, and so on.

Stewart: Well, of course, I don't think that's important at all.
It's the content, it's the style, it's not the printing.

•

Rless: I had thought that certain kinds of emphasis, like

beginning a chapter on a new page, would be important
to you.

Stewart: Well, that might be, yes, I could see that. But I

think it's a, very minor factor. For Instance, Names
on the Land came out during a wartime paper restriction,
so it's fixed up this way, you see. [Chapters end and
begin in same page.] Without any blank pages. That's
a reprint, but of course they kept the same format
because they Just reprint from offset. I think that's
the only book of mine that was done that way, but I
don't mind it at all.

Riess: I thought also that your interest in bookbinding might
have brought you closer to the private presses.

Stewart: That's very recent, and private presses don't go in

for handbindlng anyway. I don't know any private press
work that is done by handblnding; it's Just too
expensive, it's always a special Job. I don't know
where they get them bound — someplace around here.

There are one or two things that bother me about
a book. They bother me more as I get older. I suppose
my eyes aren't so good. You can't have a book with
too small print, that makes It difficult to read. But
that's pretty unusual. You get it in old reprints of
Trollope, and things of that sort, that very small
type. Another thing Is too broad a line, which I
sometimes find difficult. But that's unusual too. It's
usually in some book that is chiefly pictures.

Riess: What is it difficult?

Stewart: It's Just one of the things that gets in your road,

and I think it does slow comprehension, and tires the
eyes physically, too. But most books are pretty well
printed. Whether you have a big capital letter and
that sort of thing doesn't bother me. It's not the
essential.

Riess: It's not the medium, it's the message. Could you have
been a bookbinder and been a happy man?

Stewart: I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think that
would have enough scope. I might have been all right
in some kind of trade. I think I probably could have
been. I would have had some kind of hobby of another

2^2

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart;

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:
Stewart :

sort. But itfs pretty nearly impossible to tell what
you might be.

As I look back on my ancestry, for Instance, of
which there's a pretty good record, they never did
anything very much, and yet they must have had pretty
much the same mental characteristics that I have.
They were farmers. Everybody was a farmer in those
days. And all kinds of tradespeople. I suppose some
of them must have had very much the same mental set-up
that I have.

Mental characteristics, mental set-up?
sum up your mental set-up?

How do you

Well, I don't know exactly. I mean I suppose a
combination of your emotional and your intellectual
endowment, which develops into your environment. The
opening of my second chapter of my autobiography deals
with that a little bit, I guess.

I don't remember your ancestors being farmers. I
thought they were more scholarly.

Well, I like to imagine they were scholars, some of
them, but I don't really know, [laughing] There
isn't a very good record of it until you get down to
the time of a couple of my uncles, who did scholarly
work.

It seems like it would be more fun to imagine yourself
as having sprung out of farming stock.

I can imagine that, because as I say, everybody was
a farmer in those days, practically, Some of them had
other jobs too, of one kind or another. They were
storekeepers or tavern-keepers. One of my grandfathers
was a doctor. He must have been a pretty lousy doctor.

Why do you think he was a lousy doctor?

Because he always lived in very, very small towns, and
didn't apparently succeed very well at his doctoring.
Oh, my great-grandfather on my mother's side is the
one that I can think of as a scholar. He seems to have
been such a badly-adjusted, unhappy man, an unsuccessful
man, and yet you have a feeling that behind him there
was something that he wasn't doing. He had some
education, as things went in those days. You imagine

Stewart: things about a man.

Hiess: When you wrote Good Lives I think that you said in
that book, or someplace, that they had solved the
problem of living. Do you think that any of them
would have agreed with that assessment, or is that
Just yours?

Stewart: I think they probably would have agreed that they had
led good lives, yes. You don't know how a man's going
to react to himself, but I think they well might have
felt that.

Riess: Other people's assessment at some point along the way
might be enlightening. It's hard to get objectivity
about the quality of your own life.

Stewart: Well, since I wrote that book, several people have
told me that I was an ezample of a man who had led
a good life.

Riess: That's nice to hear, too, I'll bet.

Stewart: It's very nice to hear, yes. A professor over at

Berkeley, not long ago, a man I don't know very well,
said to me, for no particular reason, "You know,
George, you've led a good life. You've done exactly
what you wanted to do." Which is partly, I suppose,
a phase of a good life.

And after the Christmas dinner at the Faculty
Club this year, a few men gathered upstairs where we
had some more drinks, and they asked me. I was
sitting here, and one of the men from the other side
of the table, a man (again) I don't know very well,
got up and walked all the way around the table, and
spoke to me, "George, I just wanted to say that I
think you're wonderful." That's very nice. I don't
know what he was thinking about, but that's sort of —
you feel that in some way you have lived a good life.

Riess: For somebody to say that you've lived a good life
implies some kind of objective knowledge. To say
"You're wonderful," that's different, because that's
a subjective thing.

Stewart: Well, I don't think that, particularly. I don't

think the two statements are comparable in that way.
They reinforce one another. They both made me feel
very good. Particularly, since these were men I don't

Stewart: know too well. It was cocmletely uncalled for,
mean, it wasn't in the course of conversation.

Hiess:

Stewart:

Riess:
Stewart :

Hiess:
Stewart :

Hiess:

Stewart:

There's an article that I haven't read, and wish I
had, in your bibliography, from the Pacific Spectator,
called "the Twilight of the Printed Book." What were
you saying in 19*4-9 about the twilight of the printed
book?

I was a little premature. But things are moving that
way, gradually. My idea was that the book as we know
it was not the last or permanent word in the trans-
mi ttal of information and art. Such things as microfilm,
microcards, and reproductions of that sort offered
tremendous possibilities and mirtfit easily replace the
printed book. There are signs that that Is happening.

You were ahead of your time,
now.

That's what's happening

Slowly. I didn't give it enough time. That's one of
the great faults of prophecy. You should always give
it about twice as much time as you think, to start
with.

You mean you had said within twenty years?

Twenty-five years or something like that. It isn't
making out that way. The codex is a very convenient
thing. My idea was that you could sit here, for
instance, and have your book thrown on the wall there,
In letters four inches high. Just sit here and read
it, and you could press a button and move it, and so
forth. You wouldn't need to hold the book.

You wouldn't even have to have a book.
Just beamed from headquarters.

It could be

That would be possible too. Or you could have a
projector right here. It's working that way. There's

24-5

Stewart: a tremendous project now, of a whole library, 29,000
volumes or so, on one shelf. That kind of mini-
print .

Of course I was conceiving it not merely as a
way of preserving material efficiently, but actually
as a way of transmitting it to the reader. The
emphasis has all been on the preserving of material,
and it hasn't been on making it available. But
actually, most people think of microfilm, which was
an invention of the devil. Reading microfilm is Just
awful.

But that's so primitive. There's no reason why
they couldn't have something vastly better. You could
have oral books, too. As I pointed out in this
article, you could have a machine under your pillow,
instead of now, as you try to read in bed, you have
to put something around you, and sit up, and when you
want to go to sleep you have to take all this stuff
off, and turn out the light and throw the pillow away
somewhere, and it's a terrible nuisance, [laughter]
I never do it. If you could Just have this thing
reading to you, lie on the pillow and have it reading
to you, then when you went to sleep, your heartbeat
would change, and it would turn off.

The possibilities have nothing to do with this
old-fashioned codex, which was invented in about the
fifth century, you know. And it was a very useful
invention. But it isn't necessarily the last word.

Now, of course, they're emphasizing the comfort
to the reader in some of these new ones they're
putting out. There's a picture of a girl sitting in
a chair reading this thing. It looks terribly
uncomfortable to me. She's curled up. But some people
like to read that way.

Riess: Seelye, in the same review, said that you informed
the reader of "the nature and origins of our
institutions, celebrating them where possible,
condemning them where necessary." What condemning do
you think he's referring to?

Stewart: Well, Not So Rich As You Think is the obvious example.
There's certainly criticism of institutions, I suppose,
implicit in Earth Abides, that there are other solutions
to this tyr>e of thing. There's not one necessarily
proper one. I haven't done much of that sort of thing,
though, really.

Rless: In Doctor's Oral too?

Stewart: No, I don't think so. That's not really much of a

criticism of the system. I never meant it to be, at
least. I don't know exactly what he had in mind there.
There is something in Man, which could be cited on
that. I didn't think that was characteristic of my
work particularly.

Riess: When you were writing Committee of Vigilance and
Plckett's Charge and Ordeal by Hunger, I think
particularly, what did you do about the matter of
taking sides or passing Judgment? At what point did
you take sides, if you took sides?

Stewart: In Ordeal by Hunger, I don't think I took sides much
at all. I couldn't actually get very enthusiastic
about a man like Keseberg, but I don't think that I
took sides particularly. And then I don't think I
did in the other books very much either; of course,
I find my sympathies extremely with the Union side in
Plckett's Charge. I couldn't get away from that. But
I don't think that's very obvious in the book. And
as far as Committee of Vigilance goes, that was a
difficult one to work on at the time. One reviewer
accused me of defending the principle of the Committee
of Vigilance. But I tried not to, really. I tried to
show why they did it, and in that sense it is a kind
of defense of it, I suppose. But on the whole, not.

I think that is one thing which has given a good
deal of strength to my books, that kind of non Judgmental
approach.

Riess: Is it the same as the withdrawing into the sky?
you pret enough distance?

Once

Stewart: I suppose so. I find that in this present book I'm
working on very much, the fact that it's very
difficult for me to condemn any of these people, in
spite of the awful thing they get into, and the
stupidity they show. In one case, this even rather
satanic character is in many ways the most amusing
and interesting character in the book, he's by far
the smartest one of the whole crowd; a real genius
type. It's very hard for me to try to make a moral
Judgment on that kind of thing.

Riess:

Stewart :

Riess:

Stewart :

Do you think that it's harder in books than it is in
life? If you were discussing a specific current event
with a friend, you would find yourself more prone to
render Judgment?

Oh, I think so, yes. In a book you tend to see It
perhaps in the round more; when you come up against a
particular case, you have to make a Judgment in a
particular case.

Actually I'm going to have to have a kind of
rejection scene in this book, like the Palstaff
rejection scene. I'm not quite sure how to handle
that.

You say you've got it more or less mapped out.
you gotten to the real writing?

Have

I've icritten at lesist half the book, but I was feeling
my way along, perhaps too much so. On the theory that
the thing doesn't exist until it's more or less whole.
But today I sat down and I went through the last three
days of the book. It's a six-day book. And I got it
mapped out now pretty well, got the causation of the
book. What I had before were certain things I knew
were goinV to happen, but Just how one got from one
to the otl^er, what mechanism brought it into focus, I
hadn't sat\ down and worked out. I knew it would happen
some way or other but I hadn't really worked out Just
how. There are still a few things I don't know, but
I'm sure they'll come out as I go along.

I plot \ a book like that a great deal more
schematically and causally than is commonly done now
anyway.

248

Riess: When did you start thinking of this book? We've
been interviewing for a long time. Has your mind
been on this book?

Stewart: No, it hasn't been. I haven't held anything out on
you here. [laughing] I had the idea, in fact I
talked about it — not about writing a book about it
particularly — I may even have talked to you about it,
I don't know — about the dramatic problem that would
come if some senior member of an English department
took up one of the Shakespeare heresies. Finally,
I think it must have been Just about the time you quit
coming to see me regularly, I did get this idea: "Well,
that could be written as a book." I could write it.
And I was getting tired of this other Job I was working
on. So I started doing this, and I did a little bit
of reading to find out something more about the
Shakespeare business, and decided I wanted to take up
the Marlowe phase of it.

Then I got to work, and the first part went very
rapidly, Just poured out. It was very fine. It
showed I had a lot of things on my mind, a lot of
Incidents and ideas that poured out very nicely, and
shaped up about ten characters. Then, of course, I
eventually reached the middle part, which as I keep
telling you is a hard part to get through. Now I'm
about through with that, and I'm seeing the end of it
a little more clearly now.

It's a book that starts out as a comedy, and ends
as a tragedy. A com! -tragedy.

Riess: When you say there a lot of incidents and ideas, how
do you mean that? Descriptions of characters and
things ?

Stewart: Yes. Incidents that could be brought in. The whole

book practically is in scene. You see, it occurs only
in six days. There's not very much about the back
grounds of these characters, which may be a certain
weakness. You don't see them very whole. One or two
of them are worked out a little more fully.

Riess: You've been accumulating lots of details in you.

Stewart: Yes, I think there's something in that. I know I

spilled out one incident in the opening chapter, and
then I got to thinking, "Well, that's much too good.

Stewart: I've got to save that." [laughter] I cut it out
of that chapter completely, and I've put it in the
real action of the book. It's almost a climactic
moment. I couldn't waste it.

I guess I told you the reason I quit writing
novels for a while, one reason, was that I felt that
I was having to dig too hard to get details out. They
weren't coming spontaneously any more. Now it's
changed in this book, very much. I think if the
book's any good, it will largely be that it has a lot
of vitality to it.

"Life set out to do a story on C.S. Forester .. .probably 1945, and (to
judge from the daffodils) spring. We staged a meeting of the Armchair
Strategists [see page 219] at Cecil's house, to get a picture. (The
article never came off.) His house was on Keeler, now owned by Jack
Raleigh. Present [left to right]: C.D. Brenner; C.S. Forester; GRS;
John Forester; Joseph Henry Jackson (deceased); Lewis (deceased), who
was a friend and neighbor, not a member; Ronald Walpole; Reid Railton;
with hands behind head, J.H. Osmer (deceased). The other man we think
was a stand-in for Life; neither Brenner nor I recognize him. Charlie
Camp was a member, but not present." GRS

250

[Mailed -Questions, 2J February 1972, answered by
taped dictation by George Stewart]

Riess: 1. What has your outdoor life, the fishing trips,
meant to you? Is it a chance to get away and
think, or to get away and stop thinking? Can you
think of times when that change of environment
was very significant?

2. The 1937 Mexico sojourn: you worked on East of the
Giants and Doctor's Oral, and even Storm while you
were there. Why there? What about being in Mexico
rather than here? A matter of being away from
teaching and responsibilities, or are there other
factors in Going Away to Work?

3. Do you do your best thinking away from home?

4. Did you choose to teach at Duke in 1939 to "get
away from Berkeley"?

What were you doing in Pearl Harbor in November
Part of your work for Trask?

6. Why is October 1, 19^4-6, Albuquerque, NYC,
designated the "Earth Abides trip" in your diary?
Did you do it as Ish did?

7. You went back to Mexico to write? in February,
March 19^9- Again in Fall 1955-

Stewart: You ask, "What has your outdoor life, the fishing
trips, meant to you? A chance to think or not to
think?"

I should say that I am likely to do a lot of
thinking at any time. I don't think that my environ
ment influences it particularly, aside from the fact
of being definitely uncomfortable from heat or cold
or something of that sort. I don't know exactly why
my fishing trips mean so much to me. I think, on the
whole, they get to mean more as I get older and have
fewer definite outlets. I start thinking, "How long
can I keep up these trips, physically?" I have, for
instance, developed a bad knee in the last year, and
I am wondering how much I am going to be able to take
on the river. Certainly, the chance to get away on a

251

Stewart: lovely stream in good mountain country means a great
deal to me. I don't know exactly why. These trips,
of course, furnish a change from my ordinary urban
environment. I Ret more exercise, and usually manage
to lose a little weight, which I put back in the next
winter.

You ask about the Mexican visit of 1937-8. We
went there because I had a Sabbatical coming up at
that time. We were very short of money, and we knew
that we could live quite cheaply in Mexico. This
actually proved to be the case. As for going to
Mexico at all, it was very "in" at that time. The
actual shooting revolution had quieted down, and there
was a good deal of experiment in social change. It
was a very interesting place to be at that time. It
was perhaps the most optimistic time that Mexico has
had. There was tremendous interest in education, and
schools were springing up In all the villages.

Another, but slight reason for going to Mexico
was that I was writing East of the Giants, and I thought
that getting a Mexican background would help me on that.
It did, but not to a very significant degree.

I look back to the six months that we spent in
Cuernavaca as one of the most idyllic times of my
life. Our regular paycheck from the University during
that period was about $180 a month, and we had very
little money besides that. But we got along finely,
and had three servants and a swimming pool with our
little house in Cuernavaca. Our health was good and
the family was happy, and my writing was coming along
well.

To show a little about the finances of that time,
towards the end of that period I got a check from Holt
for $500 as an advance on a novel. With that money,
when we left Mexico we drove all the way to New York
with the family, and then back across the country. We
were completely broke when we got home, but we went
a long way on that $500.

You ask, what is really a repetition, "Do you do
your best thinking away from home?" As I have already
said, "I do my best thinking anywhere, anytime." I
may paraphrase what I wrote of a character in the
Shakespeare Crisis, "My mind is like some great machine

252

Stewart: or meatgrlnder, of which the wheels keep grinding on
continuously. I throw something into it to keep it
from getting too hot. I do a lot of thinking, and
sometimes I have to cool the machine by doing a
crossword puzzle or something of that sort which
supplies a sort of artificial fodder to keep the
gears from getting hot. I suppose that fishing, or
binding books, is a device to keep the machine
satisfied. "

You ask about my teaching at Duke. In those
years I taught summer session pretty regularly, for
the simple reason that I needed to make a little more
money to have the budget balance for the year. When
we drove back from Mexico, we stopped at Durham where
I knew a few people in the English department, and at
that time they asked me to teach there for the summer
session. I took the Job to make the usual bit of
money, and also because teaching at another university
yields a slight prestige. I spent a rather unpleasant
summer at Durham, by myself, the family having gone
off somewhere. It was hard work, and the heat was
terrific. About the only pleasant features I remember
were the dinners. There were several other men there
teaching without their families, and we had a foursome
that got together every evening, very pleasantly.

You ask about Pearl Harbor in 19^4. That was part
of my work with Trask on the Navy project. The idea
that I should fly out there and get a little closer
contact with submarine operations was at least no more
crazy an idea than lots of others that happened in
those war years. I had to get up a kind of halfway
uniform, without any insignia, and since I had served
in the Army before, being without any insignia always
made me feel only half -dressed. The Navy didn't give
such people much status. I rated about Just below
ensign.

Curiously, I did accomplish a few things. If
the war had gone on (though that would have been a
high price to pay) I think something might possibly
have come out of that trip. I flew out In a DC-^ with
a lot of young fellows who were going out as replace
ments on carriers. They were pretty sober. I flew
back on a big Coronado flying boat, very slow. It
lumbered across the Pacific for hours and hours. On
that trip I made the acquaintance of a young officer,
Victor Moiteret, with whom I have kept in touch ever

253

Stewart: since. He had read Storm « and was interested in
meeting me.

You ask about the Earth Abides trip. When I
came to write that book in 19^8, or whenever it was,
I looked back, Just for convenience, to that trip
across the country that I took in 19^6. I sent Ish
by the same route, although that is not of any very
great significance. That is why I have sometimes
called that the Earth Abides trip.

You ask about my later contacts with Mexico. My
wife and I went there in 19^9, without the children,
who were on their own by this time. It was largely
a sightseeing and vacation trip. I settled down
however in Lake Chepawa for about a month, and during
that time worked on the final finishing of Earth
Abides. The trip to Mexico in 1955 was in connection
with N.A.I. I went clear on to Costa Rica at that
time. My wife drove with me down as far as Oaxaca
and from there on and all the way back I was with Hal
Of Flaherty, a good friend, former editor of the
Chicago Daily News* I was also in Mexico, although
for a shorter time, in 1962-63. I spent most of the
time in La Paz. Some work on that trip, however, was
gathering material on Tresguerras, in the vicinity of
Que£etaro and Celaya. We stayed in that area for
about a week, and I rented a car to drive around in.
The opening of the section on Tresguerras in Good Lives
(although I do not hold it up as an especially notable
passage) came to me when I was driving around that
country.

As a result of these trips my wife and I have
covered Mexico pretty thoroughly, except for Yucatan.
We have really not much more desire to go back to
Mexico, with that exception. The great population
growth, and the environmental strain, has made Mexico
a less pleasant place than it was in the thirties.
Also a great deal of the hope that was then in evidence
has disappeared.

INTERVIEW IX, with George R. Stewart and Charles L. Camp.
First meetings, almost; "the history of life"; folklore,
and the Drake Plate; hoaxmakers; sideways to history;
Herbert Bolton; adventures with Charlie and George; off
the road; the house at Black Rock; later trips, other

companions;

write the way George does"; clubs; the

library, then; the library, in transition; the Bancroft
Library; pleasures and pains of writing. (Recorded
March 15, 1972)

First meetings, almost

Hless: When did you first meet Charles Camp, Mr. Stewart?

Stewart: The first time I can remember we met was in that group
called the Folio Club. And that would have been not
terribly early in either of our careers around Berkeley.
That was, I imagine, about 193^» Is that what you had
in mind?

Camp: When were you writing the Dormer Party book?
Stewart: Just at that time.

Camp: Well, that was the time I met you, because you came up
and you wanted to know something about what did I think
of the men on the Dormer Party? That's what you asked
me, "Why didn't they have better men?" and I said,
"Well, they did have some pretty good men. One of them
was Stanton. "

I remember how Interested you were in the Dormer
Party, and I thought, "Well, it seems curious to me.
You're not a Californian, and yet you" — you'd. Just
come out from Princeton or somewhere — "and yet you
seem to be tremendously interested in this episode in
California history."

255

Stewart :

Camp:
Stewart :

Riess:
Camp:

Hless:

Stewart :

Camp:
Stewart :

Actually, it's rather Interesting we did not meet
until such a late date, because we were interested
in the same things, and we'd run along parallel lines.
In fact, we both went to school in Pasadena when we
were in high school.

But you were probably after the time I was.

I was Just a little bit after, yes, but we were very
close to having tied up a long time before and never
did. Just worked out that way. After all, I'd been
in Berkeley for ten years or so at that time when I
remember meeting you, and you had been there about the
same length of time.

In 1919 George Stewart was hitch-hiking across the
country and you were going, I think, probably in Just
the other direction.

Yes, I was going back. I had Just arrived here in
1919 from Europe from the war, and I was going back to
New York to spend another two years getting my degree.
Trying to finish up my thesis and all that.

What happened to that hitch-hiking venture? Why did
it end in Kansas?

I got kind of sick, and I had had that bad pneumonia
a year or so before, which I never recovered from,
which I still, in a sense, have. And it took the push
out of me. I had gone a long way already, and I Just
didn't feel I could go any farther on it, so I took
the train there from Garden City, Kansas, in the
western part of Kansas. I'd hitch-hiked all the way
from New York City.

Oh!

Did you have any difficulties getting a ride?

Oh, no serious difficulties. Of course in those
days there weren't very many cars. If you made a
hundred miles in one car that was a Big Ride. You
rarely did that. I wrote that up. I tried to publish
it, but I could never get anyone to publish it, and I
threw it away eventually. So you can't see that one.
[laughter] When I get to my autobiography, that
section will have to have a chapter on hitch-hiking.

Riess: When you met Charlie Camp, he was an expert on
California history?

256

Stewart t Yes .

Camp: I was an amateur, [laughing] I was never an expert.
But like Bolton used to say to me — I was riding
with him one time to the California Historical Society
meeting, and he says, "Camp, what are you doing
dabbling around in California history?"

"Well," I said — I was a little bit peeved about
this, you know — and I said, "Well, Professor Bolton,
paleontology is a part of history. You ought to
learn your field. "

Stewart: Yes, very good reply.

"The history of life"

Camp: That's true, too. Paleontology is a part of history.
It's kind of an extension, and a big extension. You
can link them up very nicely. It's a good thing to
do. It's a good thing to forget that there are
boundaries between paleontology, geology, anthropology,
and all that. Just forget the boundaries and think of
the whole thing as a great sweep of history. You know?

Bless: Was that radical thinking for a paleontologist in
those days?

Camp: I don't think so. I think that in our way of thinking,
the way we were trained in zoology and paleontology
was to confine yourself very strictly to your specialty
and not try to branch out. That was one idea, sort of
a doctrine. They tried to get you to stick to your
subject and not fool around. Well, I did a lot of
fooling around. I did a lot of branching out. And
I'm not sorry that I did, because it makes life much
more interesting.

I wrote a book called Earth Song in which I tried
to bring in this idea of the whole business being put

257

Camp:

Stewart:

Camp :
Bless:

Camp:

together without any boundary lines.* And when I
submitted. It, I told Sam Farquhar, who was then
manager of the [U. C.] Press, that I would give him
a book at the time of the Centennial. (They were
publishing some books at the time of the Centennial
of the Gold Discovery.) I told him I'd give him a
book, and I did. Of course, he'd died in the meantime,
but I went to the Press with this book, and then they
objected because it contained history as well as
paleontologyj, and they didn't think we ought to be
mixing the two things up. Well, I said, "Read it,
and see what you think." So finally they decided to
let it go through the way it was, sort of protesting
about it. But I think that was proper.

My book Man is a little bit like that. I don't get
back into the paleontology particularly, but I tried
to run all the anthropology right into the. history.

Sure .

In a statement in There Was Light, you said, Mr. Camp,
something about "the obscure origin of mankind11 and
"the long, painfully slow progress of humankind. "**
And I wanted to understand what you meant in that
distinction between mankind and humankind.

Well. I don't know. exactly what I did mean, but I
think that there is probably a difficulty in
distinguishing at the beginning, at the very beginning.
We're having difficulties to know Just what they mean
by "man." When man first comes on the scene, what is
the distinguishing characteristic, or what are the
distinguishing characteristics? I used to ask people
that question, Just for the fun of it to see what
they'd say, and I asked a priest down in Africa. I
was studying bones down in Africa, going through the
caves, and this man came around. I asked him, this
priest, I said, "What do you regard as the criterion
of man? If you found ancient remains how would you

* Charles Camp, Earth Song. A Prologue to History,
U.C. Press, 1952.

**Irving Stone , There Was Light. Doubleday & Co . ,
1970, p. 273.

258

Camp: know? How would you know whether or not it was man?
What criterion would you apply to this object to
know whether it was man?"

"Well," he said, "man is to be regarded as having
faith. " When you first have faith.

I said, "All right. That's wonderful, but how
do you know that, when you're dealing with bones, and
dealing with these things in the rocks? Digging
things up? You can't tell. You have to have something
more practical in the way of a criterion. You have
to know whether it was — for instance, you know if it
was making stone tools. Perhaps you have the stone
tools there, and if it was making stone tools or had
fire, maybe you could use something like that as a
criterion, instead of the question of faith or something,
whether it had religion."

Of course, you might say, "Well, a person had
faith if they buried their dead in a certain way, and
had certain objects buried with the person, funeral
ceremonies of certain types. Then you could say they
had faith. In other words, the Egyptians might have
had a faith of some sort, or other people of ancient
times had faith. Well, then, they could say that. But
with these very ancient people, when you're going back
thousands and thousands of years, why you can't very
well say whether or not they had faith. So that's not
a very practical criterion as to whether or not we're
dealing with man as such.

So humankind, mankind, humankind — humankind
would be something very ancient, and mankind might
be something a little more recent. Mankind might be
something that's involved in the present type of man.
I suppose. I'm not sure that I understand too much
about that either.

Riess: Could you describe each other in 193^ ?

Stewart: I can remember quite definitely that meeting of the
Polio Club, because I made an effort to get- to sit
beside you, Charlie, and talk to you, because I knew
you had this Interest in California history, and I
did too. It may have been then that we talked about
the Dormer Party, actually. But I don't remember what
you looked like, except you looked somewhat the way

259

Stewart: you do now. That's all. I don't think either of us

is probably a very striking type physically, [laughing]

I remember having a very good conversation with
you that evening. And then I don't remember many
other contacts with you for quite a while. There was
a meeting up at the International House one time. I
think you and Lesley Simpson, or possibly Paul Taylor,
went out and had a cup of coffee or something after
wards. But that was not very important. I gradually
got to know you at one time or another.

Folklore, and the Drake Plate

Stewart: Really I think the big jump that our friendship took
was on that trip to Nevada.

Camp: Yes, or that club we had.

Stewart: "E olampus vitus." Yes, you took me over to that
meeting we had in Tuolumne along with Vanderhoof.
And we had a very nice trip on that. That was an
interesting situation.

Riess: What was that?

Stewart: Well, this "E clampus vitus" — I guess it's still

going — but it was supposed to be a parody of Masonry,
wasn't it?

Camp: Yes, and it was supposed to resurrect some of the
folklore of California from the early days.

Stewart: I think it's still going, but it's been run into the
ground a little bit.

Camp: Oh, yes, it's going. It's spread all over the country-
all over California.

Stewart: This was back, I suppose, about — when would you say?
That trip? 1938 maybe?

Camp: Oh, gosh, I don't remember. Wagner was there, and

Priestley was there, and the Great Hi-0 Chief Puller

260

Gamp:

Stewart :

Camp:
S tewart :
Camp:

Stewart :
Camp:

of the Tuolomne Tribe, was there. When the deuce
could that have been? It was shortly after the
plaque was discovered, this Drake plaque, because
we had an Imitation Drake plaque that we put out on
that boulder, you know. Vanderhoof fixed up this
plaque that was a parody on the Drake plaque, and
the Indians were supposed to take care of it. And
they did. It's still there. The Indians are taking
care of It. Yes. "Returning the land to the Indians"
because of the fact that England didn't do anything
about the occupancy of the country. You see, they
didn't occupy the country after all.

Why don't we say a word about that Drake plate anyway?
What about that, Charlie? Do you have anything to
say about the Drake plate?

Oh, I don't know anything about it.
as though it was settled —

It seems to me

Well, let's come clean here, now. We've got a real
opportunity here to say your say about the Drake plate,

[laughter] Yes. Well, of course, there are so many
things about the Drake plaque that are peculiar. The
whole discovery was mixed up because it was picked up
by somebody and thrown in a car, and was all covered
with grease when I first saw it. It looked as though
it had been hammered by somebody recently. Maybe not
recently, but anyway it looked as though it had been.
Oh, it was the most peculiar situation.

And then the story came out that it was picked
up over here on San Quentin — near San Quentin Point
instead of over at Drake's Bay. Oh, I don't know, I
suppose we have to say that it was genuine. That's
what we have to say now. It's like sort of a canon.
It's like some —

We don't have to say that here,
we say about it.

She won't tell what

Like the Ten Commandments or something, that was dug
up, that's got to be genuine? Is that it? The book
of Mormon, or something.

Riess: Has there always been a controversy surrounding it?

261

Camp: Well, there Is a big controversy now as to whether
it was found at Drake* s Bay or whether it was found
over here at Point San Quentin. That seems to be the
controversy now. Nobody ever questions the fact of
the plaque Itself.

Stewart: Well, there has been always some question about it,
of course.

Camp: Oh, at the beginning there was a big question as to
whether the plaque was genuine.

Stewart: Bolton said it was, and he really put it across.

Camp: Well, Bolton danced around and didn't make any real

scientific investigation of it. Then Wagner got busy
and advised him to get it analyzed or something. I
wrote a little book about it myself. I Just wrote
a parody on the whole deal. Then they sent it to
an expert and the expert decided that there was some
reason to think that the brass was ancient, or some
thing of that sort.

Riess: Can't something like that be given the Carbon-1^
dating sort of thing?

Camp: I don't think they could date it, no, but they had
some reason to think it was ancient.

Stewart: I know something about that. At least I heard of it
at the time. You see, it came into the possession of
the University someway or other, and Sproul appointed
a committee to investigate it. In the first place,
Bolton was one of the committee. Well, that was no
investigation at all, because Bolton had already stuck
out his neck a hundred miles on it, so all he could
say was yes.

The second man was Joel Hildebrand. Well, Joel
Hildebrand had it analyzed chemically, and I think
he did a proper Job on it. And it has all sorts of
impurities in it, such as you would not get in modern
bronze, or brass, whichever it is. And so it is an
old piece of brass, no question about that. But that

262

Stewart: doesn't mean that a faker couldn't have got hold of
an old piece of brass.

The third man was Jimmy Cllne of the English
department, who was supposed to investigate the
language of it, to see if it was Elizabethan language.
Jim was never a scholar, and he was not a good man
at all for that job. So I never thought that the
committee did an awful lot except to prove that it
was an old piece of brass. If it is a fake, it's an
extremely clever fake, you've got to say that for it.
You see, you can never prove that a thing like that
is so. You can prove that it's not so. But there's
no way of proving that it is so.~~

What I always objected to (although nobody ever
asked my opinion about it, I kept out of it), was
that it was not handled according to really scholarly
standards. It was accepted as being what it was, and
it became a matter of faith, as Charlie had said, from
the very beginning.

Camp: Yes. It was $3500 worth of brass. [laughter]

Riess: How did $3500 enter into it?

Camp: Well, that's what they paid this fellow for it.

Stewart: Somebody paid it and gave it to the University, I
think.

Camp: They paid this man that found it, and then it was
given to the Historical Society, and [Allen L. ]
Chickering I guess — I don't know just what happened
after that. I don't know just how it got into the
University.

Stewart: I think Chickering gave it to the University. And
it's down there still.

Camp: Oh, yes. Yes. It looks pretty good.

Stewart: Well, it may be all right. All I say is it Just
wasn't a good way to go about the thing.

Camp: Oh, no. The announcement of it was very bad, of

course. The whole thing was very badly announced.
Very bad. And I think that's what Wagner objected
to more than anything else, the fact that it was

263

Camp: announced in suoh an abrupt way without proper —

Stewart: Wagner — what position did he take on it?

Camp: Well, doubtful.

Stewart: Doubtful. Yes?

Camp: Oh, yes. He was sceptical. Of course, he had seen
all the documents regarding the voyage, and written
a treatise on the voyage, and looked over the
situation pretty thoroughly. I think that he was
really sceptical about the whole darn thing.

Stewart: According to Jim Cline, there's one interesting

objection made to it from the English point of view.
I think he spoke to people in the British Museum
about it, and they said, "Why, Francis Drake wouldn't
put up a bunch of stuff like that for Queen Elizabeth. "
It looks as if you or I took a hammer and a cold
chisel and put those letters in there.

Camp: That's what it was done with. A cold chisel.

Stewart: You see, Francis Drake would have had an armorer on
board, and if he was going to put up a plaque for
Queen Elizabeth, he would have done a right good Job
on it.

Camp: Yes. This was Just a crude Job.

Stewart: Just exactly what I would have done if I had done a
thing like that, [laughter]

Camp: Sure. Yes. What we'd have done down in our cellar
in our amateur way.

Stewart: Did you have any idea of anybody who might have —

Camp: Oh, no, except there was an outfit called the

Tamalpais Show or something. Every year they used
to have sort of a show over on Mt. Tamalpais, a kind
of a pageant. I was wondering if they could have put
up something in the way of a plaque , you know, at the
time they had this pageant, [laughter] I don't
know. Of course, that's where it was found. It was
found right there at the base of Tamalpais. Well,
anyway, nobody will ever know, I don't suppose.

Bless: Does this really amount to a real controversy? Was
there a lot of passion on both sides?

Camp: Yes, there was quite a bit of passion, quite a bit
of argument, and there was quite a bit of feeling
around the whole thing, I think more than it deserved.
Bolton was a pretty steady sort of a man, and I don't
think that Bolton got himself worked up over it very
much. I wrote a parody on it which was supposed to
be humorous, you know, and Lawton [Kennedy] printed
it. "Ye preposterous book of brass," or something
like that, we called it. And we had a lot of fun
with that thing. I gave a copy to Bolton. I thought,
"I'll see what the old boy says about it." And
Bolton said, "Oh, that's good fun," you know. He
didn't get sore about it in the least. He's a good
sport.

Stewart: Well, he was a man of great self-confidence, I think.

Camp: Oh, yes. He didn't need to worry about little things
like that.

Stewart: If he had decided that was Drake's plate, why, it
didn't make any difference what anybody else said
about it! [laughing]

Camp: Yes. Of course Bolton was a great enthusiast. And
he got a little too enthusiastic when this thing
showed up. He thought, "Well, here it is at last I"
and so on.

Stewart: You remember George Ezra Dane, don't you?
Camp: Oh, yes, I knew George very well.
Stewart: Yes. He loved a hoax.

Camp: Oh! Well, George, he loved to put over some sort of
a hoax. Yes. Of course. But I don't think George
had anything to do with this plaque business.

265

Hoaxmaking

Riess: Are you really suggesting that this was a hoax
within our time?

Stewart: The world is full of hoaxes like that.

Riess: But hoaxes that aren't revealed aren't hoaxes?

Stewart: Oh, well, sometimes it gets so a man doesn't dare
reveal it! Nobody will believe him! [laughing]

Gamp: The Piltdown skull. That was one where the guy that
put it over didn't dare to confess. It was so
successful, the hoax was so successful, and so many
people were taken in, that he didn't dare to confess.

Old George Ezra was always cooking up some kind
of a deal. He wanted me to write a story about a
monster that they'd found up at Pedro Point. You see,
he had a cabin down at Pedro Point, and he was going
to write this stuff for the newspapers, you know.
He'd started it. He'd already gotten a couple of
articles in the newspapers about this great monster
that came ashore there or something.

Stewart: [laughing] Well, now, if you have a man like that
right at hand, a very clever man, why do you say
offhand that he had nothing to do with the Drake
plate?

Camp: Oh, you mean, why do I say that George Ezra had

nothing to do with it? I never even thought of him
in that connection. Hmm! Well, now you've got me.
Of course, I'll say this, that when Vanderhoof went
to work and made a copy of it, he made a beautiful
replica for the tribe up there at Tuolomne, the
Mi woks, and it didn't take him very long to make a
duplicate of it. Took a piece of brass, and he
hammered it out, and made the letters and everything,
and put the lettering on, and everything was very
clever. He could have done it of course, but —

Stewart: You would have had to get hold of a piece of old
brass, because I think the brass is old.

Camp: Well, that wouldn't be so difficult.

266

Stewart: But that could have been done too. There are some
very Interesting things about it, that is the fact
that the sixpence, the hole for the sixpence, is
the right size for Elizabethan sixpence, and not for
a modern sixpence. But after all, if you're going
to go in for a hoax, that's the thing you do, you
know. You do that kind of thing.

Camp: They looked for the sixpence. They went out there

and dug around, expecting to find it, but they didn't.
Well, what would the Indians do if they had a piece
of brass of that sort? Would they Just leave it
there?

Stewart: I don't know what they — I wondered about that.

Camp: I wondered myself. I was wondering here, If they had
a piece of brass attached to a post, and the post
rotted down eventually, after a hundred years or so,
wouldn't they use that thing as a frying pan, or
something? They'd make some sort of use out of it.

Stewart: You'd think so, yes.

Camp: Indians are pretty clever at using things like pieces
of metal. They'd chop it up for pieces —

Stewart: Arrow points, or something like that.

Camp: Metal. I don't know. Something fishy about it.

Stewart: Well, we're on record now. You've got us in there
somewhere.

Riess: You both seem to be able to Imagine the hoax frame

of mind. I should think a hoax-doer would eventually
want his hoax exposed.

Stewart: No, no. I don't think that holds at all.
Riess: Well, what kind of mentality?

Stewart: I don't know exactly what it is, but you take — I

brought up Mrs. Plckett's letters in my reminiscences
there, you see. There's another case. And the world
is full of those things. I think there's a type of
mind that likes to do that kind of thing, and they'll
sometimes go to immense trouble.

26?

Gamp: Yes, an enormous amount of trouble. Remember at

the time that the Drake plaque was found, there were
a series of plaques that were distributed down through
the desert. Well, I don't know if they were plaques.
They were some kind of metal objects that were
secreted in various places, and were supposed to be
found by clairvoyance.

Stewart: Yes? What were they about?

Camp: Oh, they were supposed to demonstrate that this man
had a certain power of clairvoyance, and he could
tell you where these things were located. He knew
beforehand where they were secreted, under rocks,
and out in toward Death Valley and everything. And
so, he'd say, "Go to this place and you'll find a
certain piece of metal with a certain inscription on
it." And they did, and they found of course Just as
he said. In other words, he was demonstrating his
power as a —

Stewart: He'd been around and planted these things before!
Camp: Oh, yes. Yes, he'd planted them.

Stewart: Well, look at the Kensington Stone, for instance,
about the Norse people in America. That's never
been exposed at all. I mean, it's undoubtedly a hoax,
or a fake of some kind, but it's never been exposed
by anybody who did it.

Camp: What about that plaque that was found at Port Pierre
in South Dakota?

Stewart: Well, I think that one may have been true. They

have found some of them of course. They found these
lead plates in Pennsylvania, and various things.
They turn up occasionally. Because some explorers
did bury that kind of stuff. And it's perfectly
reasonable some of it should be found.

Camp: That was another thing. Wagner thought they should
be using lead. They used lead so often. He didn't
think they used brass so often. They put up lead
plaques to make it much easier to handle.

Stewart: Yes, and they had lead with them, for bullets,

whereas they didn't usually carry brass so much.

J
'

•

268

Camp: I'm not sure but that Drake did put up a lead plaque
somewhere down around the Straits of Magellan.

Stewart: Of course, I always figured if it was genuine, we
had to give California back to the British, didn't
you?

Camp: Well, that's what we did up at Tuolomne, you know.
We gave it back to the Indians.

Stewart: We gave it to the Indians there. That's stretching
a point. I think it should really go to the British.

Sideways to history

Riess:

Camp:

Stewart :
Camp:

Was George a writer when you met him?
him as a writer, or as a dabbler?

Did you see

Well, I don't know. George had already written some
things, but I don't know that I'd ever read anything
that George had written. I thought of George as a
very interested sort of an enthusiast. You know, you
can tell right away whether a person is interested,
when they begin talking about a subject, the questions
asked, and the way they talk about it. And it was
perfectly obvious that he was thoroughly interested
in this subject that he was writing about. I remember
that part of it. He was very enthusiastic about the
whole deal, and had particular questions that he
wanted to know about the Dormer Party. Whether or not
I could answer them I don't remember, but I know that
he had certain definite points that he was interested
in, and seemed to me to be well taken. This is the
thing that impressed me at the time, that he was a
man who was really getting into the heart of his
subject, you know, getting immersed in his subject.

That was probably right when I was in the middle of
the Donner Party research, about 193^» I guess.

I wouldn't be surprised. I think that was Just about
the time. I know it was in the Faculty Club. I
remember that part very distinctly.

•

269

Stewart: Well, have you got another question to throw at us?

Riess: Yes, I was thinking about coming at California

history sideways; if you Just come at it directly,
it's what you always wanted to do, does that make
you a sort of plodding kind of pedestrian historian?

Camp: I came into history by a side door, you might say.
I studied history in high school, English history,
and successions of the Popes and everything, and the
kings and everything. Oh, it never took with me.
And I came up here and I took Henry Morse Stephen's
History-I for two semesters, and boy, I didn't care
much for that. And I certainly didn't get interested
in history through taking courses, through the
courses.

I got interested in history because I began
reading the narratives, by the side door, you might
say. I was interested in finding out where certain
people got certain things, in the way of natural
history objects mostly. Say, on the Long expedition,
for instance, in 1820, in the front range of the
Rookies. I'd get hold of the narrative and read the
narrative. Getting these narratives, reading the
narratives, why, I got interested in the history. I
think that was inevitable.

Herbert Bolton

Stewart: My history is pretty much the same as that, really,
except perhaps I had more interest in history from
the beginning. I read a lot of history when I was
pretty young, and I took history in high school,
but I enjoyed it tremendously. In college, I didn't
take any course in history at all, till I came out
here, that graduate year I spent in Berkeley. I took
a course with Bolton, who got me very much interested
in Western history. So I came into it from another
side door. And I think it's quite interesting it
happened that way, because I would say — I don't know
whether I got your question straight there, but I
would think there has certainly been an example of,

270

Stewart: the two of us, of people who came in unorthodoxly

who have pursued it with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Whereas if you take Bolton's Ph.D. 's, they don't
have, it seems to me, nearly the enthusiasm or the
flair, you might say, that the two of us have shown.
Now, that's a pretty big generalization.

Camp: Well, I think that you may be overstating it,
because a man like Leroy Hafen, who was one of
Bolt on fs students, has put out a tremendous lot of
research.

Stewart: Yes, he has, but at the same time, it never seemed

to me that his stuff had very much flair to it. It's
pretty dull writing in my opinion.

Camp: Not everybody can be the writer that you are, George.
They don't have it in them. There has to be a
certain number of weeders and hoers in the garden
as well as Burbanks, I suppose. Some ordinary
gardeners.

Stewart: Yes. I think it is an interesting fact, though, that
Bolt on didn't breed anybody that came up to himself
at all.

Camp: That is peculiar, isn't it?

Stewart: Yes. I suppose of these dozens of people that he

trained, none of them came anywhere near to attaining
his own stature.

Camp: Of course, George Hammond comes pretty close.

Bolton had a tremendous vigor. You know he
used to pile books alongside his bed and read till
three o'clock in the morning, even when he was an
old man.

Stewart: He not only read, but he could do stuff with it after
he read it. I always loved the story, you know,
about Bolton in the library one night. He used to
work in his office until all hours, and. when he tried
to go home one night he got in the wrong section,
and a door slammed behind him and locked him in.
[laughter] Did you hear that story, Charlie?

Camp:

No, I didn't hear that.

Stewart: And he couldn't get out. Well, he was a man of great
resource, and of course he was used to roughing it,
you know, camping, so he went into the women's
restroom. He figured there was going to be a cot in
there. Someway or other he was too modest to sleep in
the ladies' restroom, so he took the mattress off the
cot and put it out in the hall, and lay down and went
to sleep I Had a good sleep until the watchman came
around in the morning and found the professor lying
on a mattress outside the ladies' restroom. He woke
him up, and Bolton got up and went home. That's a
very nice story.

Riess: Did he tell that story happily, or was he embarrassed
about it?

Stewart: I don't think he ever told me, I think the librarian
told me that story.

Camp: No, I don't think he'd tell you that story. He was

Just a little bit sensitive about himself. He's say,
"Now don't tell that. Don't say..." I remember one
time Carl Wheat and I were figuring on writing up a
deal for the Historical Quarterly on the Russians in
California. So I went around to Essig and Du Pour, and
Miss Mahoney and some others, and said "Give me some
articles." I knew Du Pour had written this thing,
and he said, "Well, if you can get this thing from
Bolton, you can have it, but I've never been able to
get the manuscript back from Bolton. "

So I went to Bolton. "What about Du Four's
manuscript?" "Oh," he says, "yes, that's right," he
says. "I've got that manuscript, Camp, I'll get it
for you.* Six weeks went by, and I saw Bolton on the
campus. I said, "What about Du Pour's manuscript?"
"Oh," he says, "by gosh, I forgot about that. Come on
over to my office and we'll get it now."

Well, of course, his office was stacked high
with manuscripts from the floor to ceiling, and we
started in. I started in at one corner, and went on
through the stack. And when I got to the floor, why,
there was Du Pour's manuscript. Meanwhile, Bolton
was busy over in the other corner of the room. So I
said, "Well, here, I guess this must be it." "Oh,"
he says, "don't tell anybody that. The old professor,
forgetting these things. Pretty bad." He said, "I
didn't realize it was down there, so far down, buried

2?2

Camp:

so far down."
you any I "

[laughing] I said, "I don't blame

Stewart:

Riess:

Stewart:
Camp:

Stewart :

Camp:

He never answered letters, you know. You could
write him a dozen letters, and he'd have them stacked
up in his mailbox for six weeks. He'd never answer
any letters. Never bothered.

Oh, he was really a unified man. I spoke about him,
Just in passing, in my dictation there, but I remember,
every time you'd go in to talk with Bolton, maybe
you'd want to talk with him about the Donner Party or
something, and he'd say, "What are you working on
these days?" "I'm working on the Donner Party." "Oh,"
he'd say, "that's fine. That's Just fine." Then I'd
want to ask him a question or something, but no use.
By the time I got to that, he was talking about what
he was doing. And the rest of the time he talked
about what he was doing. He was always very friendly,
though, and Just so enthusiastic about what he was
doing, that he was really a very lovely man.

You're answering your speculation about why he could
never breed an historian as fine as himself. I mean,
you could have gone on, free of this influence, but
you're describing somebody that's so fantastically
bent on what he was doing himself that his students —

That might have had something to do with it.

Well, historians that can write don't come every day
in the week, you know. Bolton could do pretty well
as a writer.

Yes, he could. And he developed as an older man. He
did much his best writing after he was a comparatively
old man.

He told me one time, "You know the secret of this
writing?" I said, "No, how do you do it?" He says,
"I never write more than one paragraph on a page.
I Just write off the paragraph, throw that page aside,
and then if I have to correct it, why I don't have
much to do, much to throw away or much to change."
[laughter] "One paragraph to a page!" That's the
way he did it.

273

Adventures with Charlie and George

Riess: Was Charles Camp interesting to you as a paleontologist
when you first met him? Did you talk about things
like that?

Stewart: No, I didn't. I didn't know much about paleontology,
and I don't think I ever talked to him very much
about that until we went on that trip up in Nevada
and he was crawling down holes and things of that
sort. I was waiting for him to come back and wondering
whether he was coming back, in some instances. I
guess Charlie was wondering the same thing.

Camp: Well, they had some mines in conglomerate, you know,

and the stuff was Just hanging loose from the ceiling.
You could Just reach up and. pick off a big chunk if
you wanted to, or it would drop to the floor. So it
was kind of a funny-looking mine. I asked this guy
who was down there, "How often do you get buried down
in here? It's a dangerous place." He says, "I got
to watch." Another place we went in — there at Rabbit
Hole Springs — we went in and got a drink that evening,
didn't we? And then we came out the next morning and
looked at the door and there was a sign on the door
that said — what was it? "The County Health — "

Stewart: "This water is contaminated with typhoid fever and
arsenic." [laughter] If the one didn't get you,
the other would!

Of course, I never believed that! I thought
that was another hoax!

Camp: We went up to the Rosebud and they said, "Oh, if you
stay there six weeks you'll get some kind of kidney
trouble or something, from that water." Well, we
didn't say there six weeks, so we didn't have to
worry.

Riess: The trip in 19*H was the first Black Rock trip?
Stewart: Yes, July, 19^1, Just before Pearl Harbor, you see.
Riess: How did that all come to pass?

Stewart: Well, Charlie had Just come back from China not long
before, hadn't you Charlie?

.
.

•

Camp: I had come back from China about four years before

that, but I might have Just come back from some place
in Utah or someplace. At any rate, you were the one
that organized this trip. You had it all arranged.
I mean, you had it all outlined what you wanted to
do. And I didn't have much of any idea of what the
country was like up there. I'd never been up there
before.

Stewart: Well, I hadn't either. I remember saying to you,

"Charlie, let's take a trip to northwestern Nevada,"
and you said, "Sure." So we went to northwestern
Nevada. That was a great trip. We went up first to
Hasaklas Creek, do you remember? You had a geological
job to do up there. Then we cut across, went out to
Reno, and went up in the desert.

We had a copy of Delano's book along with us,
one of those reprints. I also had a saw, and I had
some tools in the back of the car. (It was my car
we took along that time.) And this was a main library
book, which I shouldn't have taken out of the state.
The saw got against the book, and there are some little
saw-marks in that book, which I think is still in the
main library; if you want a reminiscence, why, go and
look up Alonzo Delano's reprint and see if it doesn't
have some saw-marks. Maybe they've rebound it by
this time.

Camp: Oh, that's Just the reprint. It didn't do any harm.
Riess: What were you after?

Stewart: I had Delano along and I was sort of following him,
like a guidebook. It was very interesting, because
he wrote a very good narrative, in 1839» and you
could tell where he went pretty well by driving over
the road. I didn't have any very definite ideas of
doing anything about that. I just wanted to get off
for a while.

Riess: And you, Charlie, you were Just going out on one of
your summer expeditions anyway?

Camp: Oh, I wanted to go out with George. I had never been
out with him, and I thought it would be an interesting
place to see, and I would sort of like to travel with
him. It was a good chance to see a part of the country
that I had never seen before. I didn't think there

•SM

275

Camp: would be much chance of finding fossils up there.
There are a few. Nevada's full of fossils, but
they're scattered. Little pockets here and little
pockets there. They don't usually amount to much.
But you never know what you're going to run Into next
In Nevada.

Off the road

Bless: What kind of car were you driving, and what kind of
campers were you?

Stewart: It was a 193? Chevrolet. It was a good car, too.
It wasn't very new by that time, and I Just marvel
at the chances we took on that car.

Camp: Yes, there were two or three places there we shouldn't
have gone. We shouldn't have gone across that mud
flat, and we shouldn't have gone across that ditch .
that day.

Bless: And the mud flat?

Stewart: Well, the mud flat happened to be all right. We got
across very easily —

Camp: It happened to be, yes, but —
Stewart: But we didn't really know.

Camp: We'd have been there yet, If we'd gotten stuck out
In the middle of that thing!

Stewart: Yes, It was thirty-five miles to walk back.
Camp: Oh, boy, I'll say it was.

Stewart: And then the next day we were going north from Black
Bock up those next springs there, and we got down
into a kind of thing like a great big ditch about ten
feet wide at the bottom —

Camp:

Just about as deep as this room.

usD

2BO

2?6

Stewart:
Camp:

Stewart :

Camp:
Stewart:

mess:
Camp:

Stewart :
Camp:

Steep sides on both sides of It! [laughing]

Stewart:

Camp:
Stewart :

We got down into it, all right,
how do you get out?

Next question was,

We went out and did a little spade work, I think,
and then I took the old Chevrolet on the run, and
Woop! the wheels spinning round —

Moved out of there, all right.

And got her out. Oh, we went on beyond that. We
took chances all the time. I just wouldn't have
nerve to do that any more at all I

You camped out all along the way?

Oh, yes. We didn't have anyplace to stay,
all our own camping stuff, though.

We had

I don't think we had a tent. We had a pressure-cooker,
though. That's what we used to cook in.

Oh, yes, we had a pressure-cooker. You betcha. Every
thing went into the pressure-cooker. I think George
said something to Ted about how terrible my cooking
was, and Ted was talking about it afterwards, she was
talking to some woman about it, and she said, "Oh,
George got so sick of Charlie's tomatoes. He put
tomatoes in everything!"

I don't remenber that. I remember you being a very
good cook, except you cooked too much, and I couldn't
face so much stuff to eat. Charlie's got a much more
hearty appetite than I have.

Well, I may have had then, but I don't now.

I had this stuff to drink. You know, if you taste
this desert water, it's terrible, but if you take a
gallon of wine along and put about one third wine in
the water, it makes it quite palatable. And we did
a lot of drinking on that.

We went to Black Rock, and then the next spring
up is called Casey's Place. We went up there. And
then we went on up to Double Hot. There are two very
hot springs that come out. Then from there we out
across some land without any road at all, if I remember,

•

• •

277

Camp: Mud springs.

Stewart: Came to a little ranch up there. There were some
people working out in the hay field. That was the
first people we'd seen.

Camp: Soldier's Meadows.

Stewart: Went on to Soldier's Meadows and then across by

another terrible road into High Rock Canyon. And
then finally we got up into that antelope reservation.
Just full of antelope. Remember? We slept one night
up there in the middle of all the antelope.

Hiess: Was it an emigrant trail that you were following?

Stewart: More or less, yes. We couldn't follow it all the

way through, but from Rabbit Hole Springs to — well,
way up to High Rook Canyon we were more or less
following It, yes.

Camp: We went out to the middle of the Black Rock Desert
and found this thing full of water, this old
watercourse.

Stewart: The old Quinn River Slough, yes.

Camp: Yes. We couldn't cross that, so we had to go back

and go clear on around, and then we came back to

that point, didn't we? Prom Black Rock. We really
covered it pretty well. Yes.

Stewart: At that time the place up there was full of obsidian
points and clippings. Hardly anybody had been up
in there. It's pretty well picked up now. I told
you [in the interviews] about the guy at the cocktail
party bringing me this thing.

Riess: Did he [George Stewart] really, the next morning, say
that he could write a book about It?

Camp: Well, I think he did. Yes, I think he was figuring
on a book at that time, but I didn't know — of course,
he didn't know either just exactly how he was going
to handle it.

2?8

The house at Sheep Rock

Gamp: There was this old house there, and it was entirely
out of place, because it was a pretty well-built
old house. It wasn't exactly a cabin, it was a well-
constructed house.

Stewart: Built of railroad ties, mostly, Charlie.

Camp: Pull of old rats, you know — the rats had been in
there and built nests in the shelves, all through
the shelves. And the pipes leading out from the spring
were all covered with this encrusted stuff from the
spring, this lime that came out of the hot water. They
had a place out on the porch with the bathtub where
the water had come, they pumped the water out of this
hot spring and out to the bathtub. Evidently he was
some kind of a crank or a sick man or something, and
he had this place out there to take this hot bath. I
guess he'd probably gone out there for his health,
from the looks of things. And then that place burnt
down later, didn't it? Well, that was a very
interesting-looking place.

Stewart: I found that fellow later, Charlie.
Camp: Oh, you did?

Stewart: Yes, he was over in Susanville, and I had a talk with
him. He had gone out there in the Depression to get
himself through. He had a wife and at least one child.

Camp: Was he sick or something? To go out there?

Stewart: No, he wasn't sick. There are a lot of self-reliant
fellows around, particularly in those days.

Camp: Did he build that house?

Stewart: Yes, I think he did. He carted railroad ties over
the railroad, and got that house up there. He had
all these ingenious things, like that hot water
business you were talking about. He was a very
ingenious chap.

I found the old water pitcher up there later. I
didn't find that on our trip, Charlie. I pieced the
pitcher together.

279

Camp: Oh, yes, I know. Looks like something that came
out of an old hotel.

Riess: How do you think the place burned down?

Stewart: Oh, I found out about that. Somebody up there

started to burn the meadow off when it got dry, and
it got over and got into the house, and Just burned
it up. The place had, I guess, a hundred old records
in it, and I always meant to pick them up and bring
them back, just for interest. They were mostly
records of the twenties and thirties, phonograph
records. They might have been worth quite a bit of
money if I'd ever got them out of there. But by the
time I went up and really decided I was going to get
them, why, the house had burned down, and of course
they'd all burned with it.

Yes, I found that fellow and had a talk with
him.

Camp: How'd you find him?

Stewart: Oh, somebody up there, one of those ranchers one

place or another, said, "Oh, he's over in Susanville,
and his name's such and such." When I went over
there he was cutting meat in a butcher shop. He
talked to me, and he was quite interested. It seemed
to me he had a pretty poor Job, but he said, "Oh, you
should have seen me when I was over at that place.

I didn't have anything at all. Now I've got a fine
job here." So here he was cutting his meat.

Hiess: Did that place get to him at all?

Stewart: Well, not at hia present stage. No, he was glad to get
away from it. That was his exile, I think.

Camp: One of the funniest things, most curious things, on

that trip was when we stopped at Gerlach, and we went
around to all the different saloons and everything,
to ask the directions out to Black Rock. Not a soul
knew, until one, we finally found one guy that could
tell us. And of all the people that we met at
Gerlach, of all the little bits of towns you know,
right in the middle of nowhere out there, and within
forty miles of the place we wanted to go to, none of
them could tell us where the road was that went out
there. Don't you remember that?

•

280

Stewart:
Camp:

Stewart :
Riess:
Stewart :

Camp:

Stewart ;
Camp:

Stewart i
Camp:

Yes, sure I do. Yes.

Remember the fellow that said you kicked him all
night? [laughter] He claimed that George had been
sleeping with him the night before and kicked him
all night, [laughter] I thought that was real funny!
Oh, you know, those fellows — after they drink a little
they — never know what they're doing.

I think the guy was drunk, [laughter]
dream had come from outside.

I think the

Did that give you some kind of indication that you
were going to a strange place?

It certainly did. Yes. Driving up there was like
steering a boat. You see, we drove up along the west
side of the desert there. There were little car
tracks going along, and we could see the Black Rock
across the desert. We knew that was where we were
trying to get to. And it was anything from, say, five
to eight miles across there. And finally we decided
we'd gone far enough, and we Just turned, and went
right across this, Just steering for the Black Rock.

[laughing] "Let's head out for it!" We didn't
realize the darned thing would be muddy in the middle.
That was the last thing we thought of. Of course we
know now that the water gets onto those flats and
blows around. The wind '11 come and it'll blow the
water five or six miles in some places. And you
know, it'll go to a low place and stay there and make
mud. If you get into that mud, with your car, why,
you might have to kiss your car goodbye.

I'm amazed we ever got that car back! We did.

I guess Ted didn't think it was in such good shape
when we got it back.

Probably didn't, no. They were tough cars they made
in those days, though.

Yes, it was a pretty nice little car. That's the
way to travel. These people who go out with trailers
and everything, never get anywhere like that.

•

281

Later trips, other companions

Riess:

Camp:

Riess:

Camp:

Stewart:

Camp:

Stewart:

Riess:

Speaking of Ted, where were the wives and children on
these expeditions? Did they have any interest in
going, or was that inconceivable?

Oh, we used to take — I used to take Jessie and the
kids. Oh, sure. We used to go out to New Mexico
and go out, you know, into the badlands of New Mexico.
I'd go down to the second-hand lots and get an old
limousine of some sort, a seven-passenger oar, buy it
for about $100, get an old Cadillac or something like
that, take the cylinder heads off and put in a new
gasket, chip out the carbon and put in a new gasket,
and the thing would go for six thousand miles and
never have any trouble. I had two of them. I had
two Cadillacs on one trip. Both of them were these
big limousines. And another time I got the last of
the Pierce -Arrows. By gosh, I wish I had that car
today! I could get twenty-thousand dollars for it!
Gee, it was a wonderful oar. My gosh, it would roar
down the line like a bull elephant.

You sound very resourceful,
person to go camping with.

I've been camping a lot.
that.

You sound like a good

Yes, I've done a lot of

Without having a good man like Charlie along, I would
never have dared go into those places I did on that
trip.

Well, perhaps I could get foolish,
think--

I don't know, I

We were foolish. I don't know if we got that way or
not.

Did you talk about what the place really meant that
first night, or was it only subsequently that you
got into thinking about it? [See Sheep Rock]

Stewart: I don't remember particularly, do you Charlie?
Camp : No .

282

Stewart: We were a little bit nervous about how we were going
to get out of the place.

Camp: Yes, I know. That's the thing that we worried about
sometimes. Yes. I don't know.

Riess: That was your only Joint trip to Black Rock?

Stewart: Yes. Then Parker Trask and Carl Sauer and Starker
Leopold went there in one trip. And of course they
could tell you practically everything there was to
be known about the place between them. Then, in 19^-7
and 19^-8, I was up there with Jack, my boy, a couple
of times, and I was up there with a couple of young
anthropologists Carl lent me from his department.

Camp: Oh, well, didn't you find a better road to get in
there?

Stewart: The road was all right. It just goes right across
the salt flats, that was all.

Camp: Oh, you went across there? The last time you went in
you went across the mud flat.

Stewart: Yes, just the way we did except by that time we knew
we could get there. The last time I was up there I
was with John Edwards and Jim Holiday. Jim wanted
to see the place because his emigrating party went
through there, and John had read Sheep Rook and he
was interested in it, so the three of us went up
there. We didn't stay very long that time. In fact
the road was so heavy we didn't drive quite to the
spring. We had to leave the car down a couple of
hundred yards and walk up. We didn't spend the night
that time.

Riess: Your trips have been at different seasons too?

Stewart: Yes. I was never up there in the winter, really. I
have some regard for my safety! I started up once
from Reno. I was going to drive up as far as Gerlach
anyway. The road was absolutely lonely, and covered
with snow. I got up about halfway, and I said, "This
is crazy," because I had my wife and my daughter and
one of her friends along. I said, "This is crazy."
So I turned around and came back.

283

Camp: I should think it would be a little bit chilly up
there in the wintertime.

Stewart: And then another time, I started in with my wife

from the other side, Susanville, and drove over part
way. And then we heard that the whole desert was
under water. This was early in the season. And so
we didn't get there that time. That's the reason I
dedicated that book to my wife, you know, who I said
was very close to it. Which has a double meaning,
because she was close to it twice and never got there.
We could look across the desert and see the rock. No
closer.

Riess: Gerlach is the equivalent of Harlan in the book?

Stewart: Yes, I guess so. I don't remember. Gerlach' s a

little town on the railroad down there, near a cement
mill. Pretty abandoned little town. There really is
not much there.

Camp: Oh, it's Just a rough little town.

Stewart: Yes. Parker Trask was a lot of help on all that

country. He wrote me a whole report on the geology
of that country.

Camp: Oh, he did? Well, what's the Black Rock? Sort of a
volcanic mountain, isn't it?

Stewart: Oh, yes, it's volcanic. That was a mere detail for
him. He was clear back way beyond that.

My son is doing the map for all Nevada now,
editing the U.S. Geological Survey map. He'll be
two or three more years on it, I guess. He goes back
every summer. But he's not much Interested in that
corner of Nevada. I guess somebody else has done all
the work on it.

Camp: I don't think that that's so interesting to the

geologists as this big overthrust. There's a hundred
mile overthrust, you know, that goes out towards the
Roberts Mountains. Part of California is supposed to
have been pushed over into Nevada, like a moving
sidewalk. Geologists seem to be interested in this
phenomenon.

..•;

284

Stewart: Oh, yes, hefs interested in a lot of that stuff.
They've had some very eminent men working on the
geology of Nevada. Jack just has to coordinate all
this stuff, which is a big Job.

Camp: Yes. Well, there are a hundred mountain ranges in
Nevada, some of which haven't been worked on very
much. But that little place of mine out there —
Muller's student, Silberling, had a thesis on that
area. He published it, and so that's all taken care
of.

Stewart: Well, are you going to ask us another question now?

'...write the way George does'

Riess: I'd like to have you talk of the ways you've Influenced
each other, calling George the Poet, and you the
Scientist, or some such.

Stewart: Well, he's a poet too. That book of his. Earth Song.
But I don't know that we influenced each other very
much.

Camp: No, I don't think so. I think that there's always
been in the back of my head the wish that I could
write the way George does. You know, he can sit down
with a dictaphone and Just spiel it off. And then get
somebody to type it for him and then he's got a book,
you see.

Stewart: Well, I do a lot of work after that too.

Camp: Do you?

Stewart: But still, I can make a start.

Camp: Boy, it takes me hours and hours to get anything

done. Days and days and all that, frightfully slow.

285

Clubs

HI ess: You've been members of some interesting clubs.
Stewart: Yes, we first met in that Polio Club, which folded.

Camp: And then we had this Armchair Strategists group.

[See Stewart interview.] And now we've got this other
club that we're in.

Riess: This third club is the one you refer to as your dinner
club. Does it have a name?

Stewart: Yes, dinner club.

Camp: It's a dinner club. We've had several names for it
but we don't stick to any name. There is always an
objection. If they call it the East Bay Club, why
the west bay people don't like the idea, and so on
and so forth. So, there has never been a permanent
name.

Riess: What was the Folio Club?

Camp: Oh, that was a book club. It was organized by Sam
Parquhar originally. And I think Harold Leupp had
something to do with it. I think the idea was to get
people that are interested in old books, or bookbinding,
illustrating* See, Sam was the head of the University
Press. And he was Interested in meeting the people
in the University that were interested in printing, and
having printing done. Sam was a very convivial sort
of a guy, and he was a genius for meeting people and
getting people together. He was Francis Parquhar 's
brother, you know. So, he organized this group, and
I think he had something to do with organizing the
Roxburghe Club in San Francisco too. That was another
book club.

The Folio Club was interesting for a while, but
when you have a group that's confined to a certain
interest, why that interest sort of dies out after a
while. You wear it out; interest Just in books or
bookmaking tends to wear out. I may be mistaken about
that, but to me you certainly can overdo it a little
bit. It seemed to me that there was a little
difficulty in getting papers and so on for the meetings.

286

Camp: I was president of it for a while, then Harold Leupp
took it over. I was away, and when I came back it
sort of disintegrated. The whole thing went to
pieces.

Stewart: Yes, that's about it, the way it went.

Riess: In a group like that the interest isn't so much in

the material in the book but in the thing, the object?

Camp: Well, I think in the people too, to find out what

they're doing. I think my interest in the beginning
was to find out what different people in the University
were doing and what they're Interested in. like Harold
Small and people like that. There were a lot of people
I didn't know very well.

I think you could say the same thing for the
Cosmos. Well, you're in the Cosmos Club too. In the
Cosmos Club you've got a group there that has a wide
spread of interests, varied Interests. I think that's
part of the attraction of the group, the fact that
there are so many different things that people are
Interested in, and you're sometimes surprised to find
out what people are interested in, besides their
specialties. I like to go to the Cosmos Club. I'm
usually sitting across from Heizer or somebody like
that, that I can usually carry on a pretty good con
versation with. I see them once a month. I don't
go out so much as I used to but I certainly used to go
to the Cosmos Club frequently.

Stewart: I go to it pretty regularly because it gives me a

good tie with the University, which I don't have so
much any more, living across the bay.

Camp: Well, I'm going to try to get out to it more now. I
haven't being going out quite so much lately.

Riess: The men in the club are more interested in their
hobbies than their specialties?

Stewart: No, most of the papers are about the men's own work,
the serious work. And a good many of them are too
specialized, really.

Camp: I don't think the papers are the thing that interests

me so much in the Cosmos Club, at least usually they're

28?

Camp: not; it's the conversation at the table. Used to
be some* pretty lively conversation when you had
people like Gilbert .Lewis., people like that there.

Stewart: It's a group that includes members from all over the
University, that's what's interesting about it.

Camp: Ernest Lawrence used to belong to that. I remember

one meeting along Just about the time the war started,
when he said, "If I had a lump of this stuff, as big
as my fist, it would be too dangerous to handle. It
might blow up the whole East Bay." I thought, "Now
what in the devil is he talking about?" Well, it was
the beginning of atomic fission. And he'd gotten
started on it here.

I talked to Latimer one day about it and he
said, "They're scared that the Germans are going to
get it before we do." Soon they shut up, everybody
clammed up about it, nobody would talk about it any
more. It was very serious business.

The library , then

Riess: Any comments on the library, changes in it?

Camp: Yes, that's another subject where we'd probably come
together quite a bit. On the library committee too;
you see, George took over Just after I was chairman,
didn't you?

Stewart: Yes, we were on the committee together, I think.

Camp: I think so, and then you took over. I think there

was some criticism of me because I didn't call enough
of the subjects to the attention of the committee.
But there was one reason for that; you know, at the
time I was there they were Just starting this thing
down at Alamo in New Mexico. And that had to be
kept quiet. And so Oppenheimer came to me one day
and he said, "I want all the physics library moved
down to the desert, and nobody's to know about this.
Your library committee is not to know about it. The

288

Camp: only man to know is the librarian, and he can have
his people working on it."

So I said, "All right, you're the boss." I
went over to the physics department to find out how
much duplication there was on the physics books.
(You know, I didn't want to take the whole business,
naturally. ) I found out that there was a good deal
of duplication, that they could get along pretty well
if we rooted out most of the things that they needed
in the desert, or wherever — I didn't know where this
place was. I know now where it was of course, but
at that time, I had no idea where this place was.

So I didn't say anything to the library committee,
because I was asked not to. But that was done Just
the same, they did the job and sent the books down.
It was the beginning of Los Alamos.

Stewart: It's very interesting that they consulted with you
on that, as the chairman of the library committee.
There are very few universities where they would have
done that.

Camp:

Stewart:

Camp:

Stewart :
Camp:

Stewart:

That might be true.

That shows the prestige of the senate.

Possibly so. It might have been a piece of courtesy
on the part of Oppenheimer.

It might have,
significant.

But even so, I think that it's rather

I think he was essentially a courteous man, you know.
It might have been that he had a certain idea of
protocol or courtesy or something. I don't know. I
never did know just exactly why he did that.

In most universities I think that would have been
handled right from the president's office right
straight down. Oh, they probably would have told the
librarian, because they'd have to tell him. Under
war conditions I think an organization like the senate
committee would not have been consulted. I think
that's interesting.

289

Stewart: I was chairman Just the year after you were,
Charlie. I had a very uneventful year, I can't
remember much of anything that happened.

Camp: Weren't they moving the library then? I had quite
an eventful year, or two years, because they were
planning the extension, the annex and everything,
ripping down north hall and putting in the annex,
the Bancroft Library and everything.

Stewart: I didn't have much to do with that. I can't remember
much of anything I did in my year, except I sort of
broke Don Coney into the Job. I was chairman of the
committee when he came as a librarian. And also,
George Hammond came in then.

Camp: Yes, I was on the committee that brought George
Hammond in.

Stewart: I was too, we were on about the same, or at least
we were probably on it successively.

Camp: That was the one good thing that we did, I thought.

Of course there was a great problem then, and I don't
know but that the problem is still with the library:
The question is, how many branch libraries should they
establish in order to relieve the main library of a
great deal of encumberance in the way of stack space.
We used to meet with the architects quite often
because they were planning, or trying to develop plans
as to whether to go into the botanical garden part
or the sunken places across from the library building,
or to take over Wheeler Hall, or to do this, or some
thing else, in order to make an annex. Now what they
did eventually was to put in the annex, and I think
they did the right thing.

But they were worried because of the enormous
amount of stack space that is required for all the
additions that are made every year. Every year there
are several miles of stack space required, that is if
you count every tier. Several hundred thousand volumes
a year, perhaps three hundred thousand volumes. They
had it all figured out that they'd need a bewildering,
astonishing amount of new space every year. Our
prediction for the future was something terrible
(predictions were made as to what would happen). Of
course, eventually they went up to Richmond and they
put in a storage space up there. They had the big

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Camp: storage space that they have now up In Richmond,

and they can move things back and forth, clumsy way
to do it.

Riess: I think a lot of time with those problems would tend
to make you kind of anti -collecting and anti-library,
eventually. I should think it would be hard to be
chairman of a library committee for long.

Camp: Well, I'll tell you frankly that the thing that

discouraged me more than anything else was seeing
the mutilation of books in the library, to go through
the library and pick up a book like, say, Whitman or
Melville, or any of the standard books that students
use, and see the tremendous amount of damage that's
done to the books. It's Just awful. It's just
sickening to see that. And it makes you wonder whether
it's worthwhile, and what is the answer to this.

And of course now I was interested in the Matthew
library. I helped build that up. That's the geology
branch library and I put a lot of my own books in
there. I'd go around and try to find one of my own
books and I couldn't find it, and I'd find out it's
been missing for a long time. Somebody stole it, you
know. That's kind of discouraging too. I found out
that they lost seventy books out of that little library
last year, several the year before, and the year before
that. Now they've got a little better system. They've
got a desk so that you have to walk between a narrow
space in going out and in. But even so, there will be
some missing numbers, and that's pretty bad.

The library, in transition

Stewart: I think the library is in a big transitional stage

right now, and it's in a very bad stage because it is
transitional. I don't think that there will be any
more scholars of my type, probably, because you can't
do it in the library now. That moving the books out
to Richmond has made them so they are no longer
available. And this terrific proliferation of knowledge
as expressed in books has temporarily gotten out of
hand. You've got to go through and get some other way

291

Stewart: of handling things. And I think It's going to come
through the miniaturization of all that stuff.

Camp: Oh yes, It's coming, the miniaturization, the micro-
cards and the micro-film. Of course they're a little
awkward to handle, but still. One difficulty right
now Is that you have to go up to the newspaper room
to read the micro-cards. Micro-cards are nice little
things. You can handle a whole volume on one card.
But It's difficult to get the machine to read them,
and Lord knows you can't read them without a machine.
The damn things are so small you can hardly see them.

Your article, Mr. Stewart, about the decline of
books, must have been written about then, when you
got into your library chairmanship.

Just a little after that, about the same time, yes.
What was that article?

I wrote an article called "The Twilight of the Printed
Book."

Oh, yes. I remember. That may be like the twilight
of the horse and carriage, but actually there will
be some printed books I suppose, even though it might
be troublesome handling them.

Charles Jones is very interesting on this subject.
You know Chuck Jones? He works back there in the
early middle ages, and he says there's going to be
a period of great restriction. Things are going to
be destroyed sometime as they were in the fifth
century, when the Alexandrian library went all to
pieces, because the papyrus only lasts a hundred
years; after a while it just wasn't there. They had
a library there of I think he says five hundred
thousand volumes. A couple of hundred years later
the largest library in the world was maybe thirty
thousand .

Camp: Do any insects attack papyrus?

Stewart: I don't know about that but it doesn't last very long
under ordinary conditions.

Riess:

Stewart :

Camp:

Stewart:

Camp:
Stewart :

Camp:

Is it kind of a mold that attacks it, or what?

292

Stewart: I don't know what the organism Is.
Camp: Does It go to pieces like old paper?

Stewart: Yes, It does. It Just goes to pieces. It will only
last around a hundred years under ordinary conditions.
Of course In Egypt It lasts longer than that because
It's drier country.

Gamp: Or wherever it's in a dry cave It will last
indefinitely, won't it?

Stewart : Yes .

Camp: Well, I suppose that this paper we've got, most of
It will disappear in a short time. It doesn't cost
too much to put things onto micro-cards or micro-film.
The fact is, you can Xerox the stuff for four cents
a page or much less if you're doing it wholesale.

Riess: You're suggesting that people won't do the kind of

research that you've done Just because it's awkward?

Stewart: I don't see how they can. Browsing through a library
and looking at the books, you can cover so much that
way. I think that it's going to be much more a Joint
operation. It is already, of course. I'm already an
anachronism, you see, they don't do that sort of thing
any more. They always figure out they're going to
get a certain amount of money to do this Job. I never
figured in terms of money at all. I Just went out
and did it. Even that place-name dictionary I did
myself.

Camp: That's more or less true with me, I never figured
much on money. Of course I did make arrangements
with Fred, Fred Rosenstock. He'd always say, "Well,
I'll give you a certain amount if you'll edit this
manuscript, or something." Never gave me very much
but it was enough to make it interesting you know,
not wasting your time.

Riess: Getting back to the idea of browsing through a

library and letting the subjects sort of happen to
you as you walk into them. . .

Stewart: You can't do it when the books are out in Richmond.
It's as simple as that. I often think of the Civil

293

Stewart: War for instance. They moved the official records
out to Richmond. Well, gee, they're gone. They
don't even have the index volumes in the main library.
With those index volumes on the Civil War you could
do a lot if you were working on a Civil War subject.
But now it's Just gone.

The Bancroft Library

Camp: Well, I think the Bancroft Library has been a godsend
for me. Especially this last Job that I'm doing.

Stewart: It has been for me too. The stuff is always there.

Camp: Yes, it's always there and it's handy so that you

can get at it. If I have to look up the title page
of a book, why it doesn't take but a few minutes to
get the thing out and look 'it up and check it up if I
get the imprint out. I've had to do a lot of that
lately with this new edition of the Plains and Rookies,
you know. Oh, the Bancroft's been a godsend, Just
wonderful. In fact, you know Streeter was going to
give his whole collection to the Bancroft at one time.
And he told me that he thought the Bancroft was one
of the great collections in the country, of course,
and he thought of .it as a wonderful place to work
and he had been very favorably Impressed with it
because he'd been working here a little bit, he knew
the Bancroft pretty well. You know, he's a great
collector, and it was a terrible thing that his
collection wasn't, that he wasn't, handled correctly.

Riess: The Bancroft has always been run by scholars rather
than librarians, or is that not a distinction?

Camp: Well partly so, I think they ought to be a combination
of both.

Stewart: It was the librarians and not the scholars that lost
that Streeter collection though, as I understand.

Camp: I think it was the president himself that lost the
Streeter collection, as far as I can figure it out.

Camp: I was there in Streeter's house at the time that he
decided against it. He told us. And I was there at
the time he decided to give it to the Bancroft. He
had George Harding and me down to lunch that day. I
came back from Africa or someplace and had this
telephone call and we came down to lunch. He said,
"I'm going to give my collection to the Bancroft
Library . M And we thought that was great , and con-
gratulated him and everything, and didn't hear
anything more about it. (Because I didn't think it
was my business and I thought that would all be taken
care of. I didn't think there would be any more
trouble about it.)

And then I was back at Streeter's house, I was
staying there for two or three days, I guess maybe
more than that. And one time we were sitting at the
table and he said, "You know, I didn't get an answer
to my letter to President Sproul." I said, "Well,
it's awful strange, I think something must have
slipped up. I don't think that President Sproul
would have failed to answer your letter. Something
funny."

I tried to find out afterwards what went on and
I never really found out. Except that I think maybe
Streeter's proposition was turned down, and I don't
know just what happened. I don't really want to know.
But they made a big error, I think, in not taking
that collection. It was one of the great collections.
I guess next to the one at Yale, it was the greatest
one ever formed of western Americana. Not only
western Americana, my gosh, it included the whole
eastern seaboard way back to the time of Columbus.

Riess: Where did it go, what happened to it?

Camp: It was dispersed at public auction. Must have spent
about a year going through auctions and brought about
three million dollars at auction. Those books. So
the next time I saw Tom he said, "Well, I'm going to
sell my books at auction. " He has a big family and
lots of grandchildren and so on, his widow and
everything.

295

Stewart:

Riess:

Pleasures and pains of writing

Well, we're going to have to get moving pretty soon,
I'm afraid. Are you through?

No, I haven't let you ask enough questions.
Stewart: I don't know that I, have so many questions.

Camp: Well, I. want to know what George's secret is, but I
don't think I'll ever find out.

Riess: Please ask him.

Camp: Maybe he won't tell us, maybe he can't tell us. I
don't think he can tell us.

Stewart: I have no secrets at all, Just hard work, a little
native ability, [laughter]

Camp: Well, that's probably true.

Riess: You've finished your book, haven't you?

Stewart: In a sense, yes.

Camp: Your novel? I" The Shakespeare Crisis]

Stewart: Yes.

Camp: Come out the way you said it was going to come out?

Stewart: Well, yes, it did. I've got to go back and change a
few things in it, though.

Camp: It's too bad to have him assassinate himself that
way. Hope I'm not spilling the beans.

Stewart: I just finished the first draft, and I've been
letting it wait around a while.

Riess: You're not satisfied with what you have?
Stewart: You're never satisfied completely, I suppose.
Camp: That's my opinion.

296

Stewart: Maybe on a particular sentence or a particular

passage you may be satisfied especially. But you're
not really satisfied with the whole thing.

Camp: I thought that probably was the case. But of course
that's the natural thing. You Just can't keep
working over It forever.

Rless: Did you go about your writings in paleontology
differently from your writings in history?

Camp: Oh, yes. They were much more stilted. I mean, much
more cut and dried. You get a training under these
scientific men, these scientific professors. They
give you a pretty cold-blooded training in writing.
Everything has to be Just so. You've got a telegraphic
style for certain parts of the thing. The papers have
got to be all organized in a certain way, and all that,
otherwise they don't pass them. So there was a tendency
to squeeze the Juice out of everything at the beginning.

All the papers that I wrote I felt afterwards
they'd sort of had the life squeezed out of them.
The whole subject became then a dried-up subject. And
I got a little bit fed up with that sort of thing. So
that's one reason that I branched out.

Grinnell used to say, "There are a lot of friends
of mine that are in science that think more highly
of some foolish little popular article that they've
written, than they do of all their scientific work."
He seemed to think that was a big mistake, but I know
how they felt. They felt that they had really
blossomed out sometimes if they put something into a
magazine or some little poem or something that they
had written. They felt more human about that than
they did about their dry-as-dust scientific writings.

You take a lizard and you count the scales on
his stomach and the length of the tail and the length
of the head and write a description. And you take the
bones of the skull and compare them with the bones of
the skull of some other critter and you make a
diagram of whether they're related and Just what way
they're related and so on.

Well, I did that in my thesis and apparently it
was of some use to some people because that thesis

297

Camp: was published fifty years ago and they reprinted it
the other day baok at Notre Dame. They reprinted
it and charged .$17 a copy for it and they told me
they'd sold more of that than any of the other
reprints that they had now. I thought that was very
strange. I told them I was somewhat embarrassed to
see my thesis coming out because there are so many
things that would be changed now. After fifty years
there are a lot of changes.

But anyway, I felt kind of elated about the
whole thing, the fact that it could still be of
enough use that people could still use it. I asked
one of the boys down at the museum, "What do you think
of this deal of reprinting that thing?" "Oh," he
says, "That's just fine. There are a lot of people
that want that thesis and they haven't been able to
get it." So, it's all right.

Riess: Was there room for real speculation in that type of
writing?

Camp: Oh, yes, there is room for speculation, I should say
so. Yes, that's the core of it, that's the main
thing in that scientific work. It's not exactly the
speculation but the conclusions that you come to, the
. new things that you find out. It's the new discoveries
that are exciting. Of course scientific work in
itself is probably Just as exciting as anything you
could possibly do.

But the results, as they're published, are not
necessarily very exciting to anybody, unless you're
very deeply immersed in the subject yourself. If
you know enough about the subject so that you can get
in there and figure — the theory of relativity at the
beginning must have been very exciting to people that
knew what they were doing. But it certainly wasn't
to people who didn't know anything about the subject,
because it was too abstruse, too far away from every
thing that they experienced. But it's much that way
with any kind of original work.

In science, you've got to have a little back
ground in the subject in order to appreciate it or
to make it interesting or exciting.

•

298

Riess: Now, I know you have to be leaving.
Stewart: Yes, I think we'd better haul off now.
Riess: All right. Thank you both.

Transcribers: Jane West and Lavinia Limon
Final Typist: Keiko Sugimoto

•

299

APPENDIX A

On Awarding Honors

At one point I spoke about Bob Erode sticking his head in
at the door and then asking me to run for the Board of the
Faculty Club ['p. 1?^]. That's a good example of what might be
called luck. It led to a good deal in my life, and even, I may
say, had some influence upon the history of the University.

I became president of the Faculty Club, and I have already
said something about that. On December 8, 1966, I performed my
last duty as president, when I presided at the big annual
Christmas dinner, which has been the chief celebration of the
Faculty Club since its foundation in 1902. Governor Brown, at
my invitation, came down from Sacramento to the dinner, and gave
a little fillip to it. The reorganized Monks' Chorus sang
magnificently, and Cyril Birch and his players presented some
excellent skits. Since I had had a good deal to do with all of
this, I could feel very happy that I was going out in a slight
blaze of glory. At this point, rather more than at my actual
retirement, I felt that I had finished my active work.

Then, as it happened, after about a year (I went fishing
in Chile and did other things in the meantime) I was tapped to
be chairman of the Centennial Honors Committee--my club service
being, I imagine, a chief recommendation. Professor Garff
Wilson, Chairman of Public Ceremonies and much involved in the
Centennial of the University, was the one, I think, who picked
me, really, Officially, my appointment came from the Chancellor.

The point was that the University (this campus, in
particular) wanted to establish some method or methods by which
worthy people could be honored during the Centennial Year. About
all that we had already was the honorary degree. Such degrees
cannot be given in large numbers, and they are controlled by
the Regents on a statewide basis. My Job, with my committee,
was to work out ways in which honors could be invented and
bestowed.

By the time that I went into the Job the idea of the Citation
had already been developed. Garff says that I am wrong, that
I went in from the beginning. Usually, I am considered to be
the inventor of the Citation. That is the way legends develop.
Probably there is no use my fighting against it. When you have

300

something like the Citation, you have to have some name to tie
it up with. I am the name.

At least, I had a good deal to do with the way in which
it was given, and working out how and for whom.

The Citation, as far as I know, was a new idea. It has
proved, I think, to be a good one.

During the Centennial Year we handed out citations liberally —
about a hundred of them altogether. They were given to a few
active faculty and people in the University Itself, and to a
good many emeriti. They were also given to alumni who had worked
hard for the University, particularly in connection with the
celebrations of that year.

Gradually we worked out the standards which still are guide
lines. Not only must the person receiving the Citation have
eminence in some way or other, but also he must have an intimate
connection with the campus. Coming to the campus to deliver a
lecture is considered to give this intimate connection. In
addition, the Citation must be awarded on a formal occasion. You
cannot Just mail it to somebody. Furthermore, the recipient has
to be there to receive It. These regulations insure that the
recipient should at least have his moment of glory.

There was to be created, as part of the Centennial Celebration,
by the Chancellor, an honorific body to be known as the Berkeley
Fellows. Their number was to be one hundred, and it was to be
a permanent organization. It was to have no particular duties,
and we were very careful to establish that it was not going to
be a money-raising organization. Its membership was to be from
outstanding people, with some connection with the University,
although the intimacy of relationship was not emphasized, as it
was with the awarding of citations. The Chancellor would give
a dinner once a year, and perhaps use this opportunity to make
a kind of State-of-the-Unlversity speech and get reactions from
a large group of interested people.

The Chancellor sent out a letter to a considerable number
of prominent people who were connected with the University. I
think he sent to all the honorary degree holders from this
campus, who over the course of the years make up a fairly large
body of people. These were expected to send in nominations to
the Fellows, and they did. We got about three hundred nominations,
each including a brief statement as to why the person was being
nominated. Then we had a committee, of which I was chairman,
who put in a lot of work winnowing things out.

301

A comparatively small number of the three hundred were
easily eliminated, since they seemed to have been nominated out
of personal friendship or for some other not very good reason.
The great majority, however, were real candidates. We had to
spend a lot of work on the subject. It was particularly hard,
because this was an unusual and one might say unprecedented
situation, and there were no guidelines laid. Gradually we
came to see that there were two partially conflicting principles.
Should we consider these people as representatives of groups?
Or should we consider them entirely oh their own preeminence?
The only veto that we laid down was that no active member of
the University (whether student, faculty, administrator or
regent) should be included. Gradually we came to see that
there were two big recruiting areas. There were the emeritus
faculty, and we finally took about fifteen or twenty of them.
Second, there were the prominent alumni, especially those who
took an active interest in University affairs. There was, to
my mind unfortunately, a strong and natural tendency to include
people who had given generously to the University. There was
also a natural, but again to my mind unfortunate, tendency to
make this an occasion to t>lle honor upon honor. That is, if a
man had an honorary degree already, that seemed to make him a
good candidate for the Fellows. That meant that you didn't
really widen the base. Besides, if somebody had an honorary
degree, appointment to the Fellows really meant less to him.

There was a certain group that we called the super-stars,
upon whom everybody naturally agreed. That is, people like
Warren and Sproul.

We never really did solve the question of representation
versus eminence. I thought, for instance, that the University
should, get someone from the labor movement, but the man that I
nominated did not get by. I had the feeling that we were going
to end up with a lot of backward-looking alumni, and I even
talked to Heyns directly about that problem.

In the end, I think we didn't do too badly. The committee
winnowed things down and sent in about 125 names. The Chancellor
selected the one hundred and we were off.

The functioning of the Fellows has been Just about what
we expected, and the organization now shows good prospects of
being permanent. The new Chancellor has taken it over.

As to my own part in it, I remained as chairman of the
advisory committee appointed, by the Chancellor, its duty being
chiefly to nominate people for the vacancies. Vacancies,
naturally, occur only with a death. In that case, the new

•
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302

appointee succeeds to the number of the old one.

We had, according to my way of thinking, a slight foul-up
at the first meeting, that is, the dinner at the Chancellor's
house. I had it all arranged that we would draw for numbers,
so that we would be an association of equals. That is, number 1
would not have any precedence over number 45. At the last
moment, however, Donald. McLaughlin, who was a member of the
committee, suddenly had a brainstorm. He rose, and moved (blast
him! ) that Bob Sproul and Mrs. Sproul should be respectively
given the numbers 1 and 2. This threw the whole thing off. Of
course, when a motion like that is made (Mrs. Sproul was present)
you can't oppose it.

Obviously, you should not make a motion which does not
really allow for any choice.

At this time, not only did I have the appointment as
chairman of the committees on the Citation and the Fellows, but
also I received the appointments to be on the committee for the
Clark Kerr medal and for honorary degrees.

All this is an illustration of the old adage that success
breeds success, but it is also an exemplification of Stewart's
Law of Honors and Prizes. That is, roughly speaking, that the
more honors a person has the more honors you give him. A child,
let us say, gets some kind of prize in nursery school. In
kindergarten he is thus a little outstanding, and so is a "safe"
person to receive the Kindergarten Prize. So it goes, onward
and upward. At every stage you give him the prize, because he
is "safe." After a while, he gets a Nobel Prize, and a whole
roster of honorary degrees. During the same years, the fellow
who missed out in nursery school keeps missing out on all the
other things as they come along.

I served on the Committee on Honorary Degrees only for a
short time, and got little feeling for it. I cannot say that
I made any contribution to it. I got off it because I exercised
my emeritus prerogative, and went to New Zealand.

As for the Kerr Medal, I probably contributed something.
I wrote out a long communication which we published in the
Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors,
establishing some guidelines for the awarding of the Medal. I
never got very deeply involved in the matter, however, When I
was rotated off the committee after a few years, it made little
difference to me.

•

303

I think thnt all this matter of honors in the University
deserves a. little comment. On the whole, I approve of the
matter, though there are obvious corruptions that creep in.
When I was chairnan, I was likely to tell my committee, "Remember,
when you give someone an honor, there's also someone else to
whom you do not give an honor. " You have to be particularly
careful not to fall into the trap of Stewart's Law.

We worked pretty hard at that point when making up the
list for the Fellows. We nominated a considerable number of
people who had not had honorary degrees, at the same time
passing over some people who had them. But there was one agency
of the University that raised objections. This was the Public
Relations Bureau. They even persuaded the Chancellor not to
publish the list of the Fellows, and that organization has never
really been announced to the public or had any publicity. On
the other hand, of course, some of the people who had been
appointed Fellows came around, to me and said, "Here, the
Chancellor appoints me to this body with the note that it is a
high honor, and then they never even put it in the papers.
What

I've always trembled a little about my association with the
honors during these last few years. I have been afraid I would
end up the most unpopular man on the campus in the minds of the
great majority, those who had not received honors, even though
the few who had received honors might think that I was all
right. There is no evidence that it has worked out in this
way. Obviously, there must be individuals who think that they
have been passed over unjustly. I questioned my committee
several times as to whether they were, individually, conscious
of any adverse criticism of what we were doing. They have always
replied that they have not sensed any such objection, and that
there was much approval. I hope so.

Some universities, like Stanford, avoid this problem by
giving no honorary degrees at all. This seems to me too bad.
To refrain from giving honors to someone who deserves them Just
for the fear that you are missing somebody who may deserve them
equally, seems to me to represent a certain pusillanimity.
Something of the vigor of a civilization can be reflected in
its willingness to make decisions, even though they may be
difficult ones.

George R. Stewart

• •

304

APPENDIX B

On Dishonesty, Seeming and Real

If there is one thing more than another which disturbs
me about the present-day university, it is not the occasional
triumph of brashness over experience or the breaking of windows,
but it is the apparent breakdown of common honesty in the
student's relation to his work. I find, this evidenced
particularly by the open advertisements of term-papers and even
of graduate theses for sale. Violence and arson may be said to
work upon a university system from the outside, but the break
down of honesty eats at the very core. Moreover, I am afraid,
as people who have cheated as undergraduates move on, they
eventually become professors and carry with them this attitude.

I want to talk here a little about some experiences in my
teaching career, and a little more about some of my experience
with dishonesty in various forms over a long career as a writer.

When I was at Princeton, we had an honor system which was,
I believe, strictly observed. One man in my class was, I
believe, dismissed for dishonesty, and he was, as it happens,
from a foreign country. Such an honor system could be observed,
and largely policed by the students themselves, in a place like
Princeton of that period, which was comparatively small, and
preserved the tradition of the gentleman. (Don't ask me to
define that world gentleman. )

When I came to Berkeley, we had an honor system too. It
did not work very well, and it was abolished after a few years,
largely, as I remember, at the insistence of some of the
scientific departments.

I had one interesting experience with it. In English Ib,
a large course with many sections, I was teaching two sections.
One of them had the examination in a room with only people of
that section there. The other one had an examination in a room
with a section taught by some other instructor. As it happened,
through a misunderstanding, a brief identification question
had been put upon the examination from a poem which had not
been in the regular assignments and which I had not assigned,
though many instructors had. The professor in charge of the
course told me just to Ignore that question as far as my students
were concerned.

: ••••

305

Among the students who took the examination in a room by
themselves, no one at nil answered that question. In the other
section, about rx third of my students answered it, obviously
having copied the answer from the students of the other section
with whom they were mingled. With one exception, all of my
students who answered this question were on the edge of falling
the course, or getting a D, at least. The one exception was
the best stmdent in the section, and I would suppose that she
had done a little extra reading.

I gave my results to the professor in charge of the course,
but he really suppressed the whole matter, as not being anything
that he wanted to stir up.

Prom my experience at writing I can give you an example
of my theory that professors who have cheated as undergraduates
will continue to carry the thing on after they are professors.
About three years ago the California Historical Society
Quarterly published an article on Bret Harte. Since I still
keep up on Bret Harte, I started to read the article, and was
astonished to find that it was cribbed, sentence after sentence,
from my biography of Harte. It was by a professor in one of
the local colleges.

I reported the matter to the editor of the Quarterly, saying
that it made no great difference to me but that I thought he
should be very much perturbed. He was. Obviously, in such a
case, there should be a quick and full apology published in the
Journal, with an explanation. But the society took what was,
to me, a strange position. At one point I was astounded to
find them suggesting that they didn't want to take any action in
the matter because then the professor might sue them. I replied
that I could sue them on my side, definitely. Eventually they
published a partial, I should say, explanation of the matter,
with a letter from the professor, who pusillanimous ly blamed
matters on his stenographer, who had just copied things out, he
said. Obviously this is no explanation.

I have suffered other plagiarisms too. Some Dutchman
published what was apparently nothing much more than a trans
lation of Storm into Dutch. He would probably have got away
with that except for some bad luck. At Just the time of the
appearance of his book, an authorized translation of Storm
came out in Dutch, and of course the similarity was noted. The
authorized publishers, naturally, raised the case. Parallel
columns were published in some Dutch Journal, and there was a
scandal.

306

At the opening of the war a somewhat hysterical book
called Bef ore I Die was published, with large extracts from
Storm included in it.

Of course, there have probably been a great many other
instances of plagiarism which have never even come to my
attention. Plagiarism, however, is a term that should not be
used too freely. Writers naturally borrow terms and twists of
speech from one another, sometimes without even realizing it.
Mark Twain tells a long story about a case of this kind. Such
minor borrowings should be taken as compliments.

I have never got into trouble that way, although once I
put myself into a position which might have caused trouble. At
that time I was seeing a great deal of C.S. Forrester, and we
were both writing novels. Such a situation is likely to lead
to trouble. He was working on the Good Shepherd, and I was
working on Fire. If you examine those books, you will see that
the same device is used in them, of having a man quote the Bible
for the terms of the story. It would seem very likely that at
some point one or the other of us had had the idea and had
transmitted it to the other one. The one receiving it may not
have been conscious of getting it in that way. In my own
defense I would say that the Bible figures much more in my
writings than it does in his, so that the likelihood should be
that I originated the idea, and I am sure that I did. He, of
course, may also have originated it independently.

I did not discuss the matter with him after the books came
out, and the incident never made any difference in our relation
ship. I have never had any threats of legal action in this
connection. I have spoken already of the slight difficulty
in the Phoenix book. In another instance I got into a personal
tangle about my use of a name. I was absolutely flabbergasted
when a person whom I knew quite well took a very serious
offense at my having used his family name for a character. His
name was, incidentally, not one x?hich would call attention to
itself. Moreover, the character to whom I had applied it was
a very sympathetic one. There was nothing about the character
that in any way, as far as I could ever see, suggested the man
himself.

There wasn't much that I could do, except to say that no
one has a copyright to his own name, and that no ordinary person
would make any connection in this case.

I think that he got over it, and we have remained on good
terms. I must say, however, that I've always kept my guard up
about him since that time.

•

M! - n rf v

307

Actually, you always take a ohanoe in using any kind of
name, because somebody may turn up who wants to make a fuss
about it.

I have had several cases of piracy — a Brazilian edition
of some book (Storm I think) was one example. In 196! I was
in Uppsala. A friend suggested that we look in the university
library and see how many copies of my books were there. Among
them was the Swedish translation of Earth Abides. I had never
heard of it, or seen a copy of it to this day. The Swedes have
a great reputation for being meticulous, but apparently this
publisher did not bother to get a contract with the author.

When U.S. 40 was coming out, I received the galley proofs
when I was in Boston. I took a look at them, and decided that
I could not have that book published in my name. The editor
had made changes all over the place, and some of them quite
unwarranted and incorrect. The publishers (Houghton-Mifflin)
looked at the text, and decided that I was right. They had
the whole book reset. Something of the same thing (though with
a different ending) happened with a Juvenile that I wrote once.
I said that it had been changed so much that it was no longer
my book, and I refused to have it published under my name.

I got into a rather curious jam with a Norwegian publisher
about a translation of Man. He must have been some kind of
fundamentalist, and he objected to some of the statements about
religion in the book. He wanted to expurgate it, and I would
not let him. As far as I know, the translation never appeared.

Saxe Commins was unduly sensitive, it seems to me, about
the use of the word Jew, or Jewish. I took it out, in manuscript,
a couple of times out of deference to him and in the name of
friendship.

I should also like to get into the record a case in which
I myself was accused of plagiarism, or at least of bad faith.
It is also of some interest in that it involved the Bancroft
Library and a man who became something of a legend around there.
This was Willard P. Morse. This story goes back to the time
when I was working on Bret Harte.

Morse was a retired mining engineer, who had laid by a
nice amount of money. His great and overwhelming hobby in his
retirement was that of collecting items by and about various
writers, mostly American, in whom he had become interested. He
was not much of a reader, I think, and the collection itself was
what interested him. One of his first-line collections was
Harte.

308

Morse would show up at the Bancroft Library, once in a
while. He lived in Santa Monica, but he would come up for a
few days or a week, and spend his time hunting through the
files. He would spend any amount of time running something
down. He went beyond the ordinary collector, by making the
thing more readily available. He put all his clippings on
standard-size paper and arranged them carefully, so it was a
delight to work with them. I went to his place in Santa Monica
several times and worked there, and he was very generous with
all his materials.

Morse was a collector, not a scholar, and there is a lot
of difference. As I have said Morse would go to any amount of
trouble to run down an item but the item had to be identified
for him first. That was what I was pretty good at. Prom some
kind of evidence (internal or external) I would discover an
article that Harte had written, and either run it down myself
or give the reference to Morse to work on.

After a vrhile I had collected, with his help too, a fairly
good bibliography of the writings of Harte in magazines and
newspapers. (On second thoughts, I take out that word "with
his help" above. His help always came afterwards, not in the
identification of the material itself. ) I had this material
typed up, with the idea of publishing it sometime. At this
point Morse asked me for a copy of it, and I gave it to him,
since he had always been very helpful to me, and I was glad to
repay some of that debt. Morse also worked at the Huntington
Library, and he showed the people there this bibliography. My
name was not on it. The Huntington Library people wanted a
copy of it, and Morse gave them one. They put it in their files,
apparently as his work. I kept on working on Harte, and
increased the bibliography substantially after I had given him
the copy. Eventually I published it, and I dedicated it to
Morse. I did not, however, make any acknowledgement to him,
in a scholarly way, because he had not actually identified any
of the material for me.

Before long the publisher (The University Press) had a
letter from somebody who had worked in the Huntington Library.
He accused me of having pirated Morse's work, without acknowl
edgement. He gave as his evidence the fact that this
bibliography of Morse's was in the Huntington Library.

I suppose that a lot of morals can be drawn from such a
case. Chiefly, I should say, it demonstrates that things are
not always Just what they seem.

309

I had Sproul meet Morse on one occasion, and Sproul made
a trip to Santa Monica to look at the materials. On Morse's
death, in the mid-thirties, the family decided to sell the
material, and it has been split up, mostly, I think, in
libraries in Southern California.

Morse once told me an interesting story, which I used as
a passing reference in Doctor's Oral. As a very young man he
had worked for some mining company on the Comstock Lode in
Virginia City. He was apparently a bookkeeper and worked with
some kind of a ledger. Everything broke up, and the companies
went bankrupt, and Morse took his ledger and laid it on a shelf
there. Thirty or forty years later he came back and looked in
through the window where he had worked, and there was the ledger
still lying on the shelf in Just the position he had left it.

On the whole, having written so much over the course of so
many years, I think that I must have handled myself quite
circumspectly, not to have got into any more trouble than I have,

George R. Stewart

310

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

Personal Biography

Born to George Rlppey Stewart and Ella May Wilson

Stewart, May 31, 1895, Sewlokly, Pennsylvania
Married to Theodosia Burton, May 17, 192*4-
Children: Jill Burton - 1925
John Harris - 1928

Education and Degrees

A.B. Princeton, 191?

M.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1920

Ph.D. Columbia, 1922

Positions Held

1920 Assistant in English, U.S.

1921 Lecturer in English, Columbia
1922-23 Instructor in English, Michigan
1923-25 Instructor in English, U.C.
1925-35 Assistant Professor of English, U.C.
1935-4-2 Associate Professor of English, U.C.
19^2-62 Professor of English, U.C.

1962- Emeritus Professor of English, U.C.

1952-53 Pulbright Professor of American Literature and

Civilization, Athens, Greece
1926 summer, University of Michigan
1939 summer, Duke University
19^2-43 Resident fellow in Creative Writing, Princeton

U.S. Army, 1917-19

Civilian technician, U.S. Navy, 19^4

Editor, U.C. Division of War Research, July-Dec

Chairman, advisory committee of California Place-Names

Project, 19^-^7
Collaborator, U.S. Forest Service,

311

MAJOR WRITINGS

Bret Harte 1931

Ordeal by Hunger 1936

John Phoenix 1937

East of the Giants 1938

Doctor's Oral 1939

Storm 19*4-1

Names on the Land 19*4-5

Man: An Autobiography 19*1-6

Fire 19*1-8

Earth Abides 19*1-9

The Year of the Oath (in collaboration) 1950

Sheep Rock 1951

US *K> 1953

American Ways of Life 195*4-

Years of the City 1955

NA 1 1957

Pickett's Charge I960

The California Trail 1963

Committee of Vigilance 196*4-

Good Lives 1967

American Place Names 1970

The Shakespeare Crisis 1972

312

PARTIAL^! BLIOGRAPHY (to 1957)

San Carlos Day, Scribners, August 1920

Modern Metrical Technique. 1922, U.S. Vetrerans Bureau.

Method toward study of dipodic verse. Mod. Lang. Assn.

Publications, v. 39 Dec. 1924

Iambic-Trochaic Theory in relation to musical notation of verse.

Journal of Eng. and German philology, v. 24, Jan. 1925

Literary Panorama, Calif, monthly v. 18, March 1925

Whitman and his own country, Sewanee review, v. 33

Apr. June 1925

Bret Harte on the Frontier Southwest reniew, v. 11,

Aprl 1926

Meter of the popular ballad. Mod. lang. ass'n. , v. 40 Dec. '25

The real Treasure Island, University Chronicle, v. 28,

April 1926

The meter of Piers Plowman, Mod. Lang. Assn. v. 42, Mar. '27

A note on the sleep-walking scene. , Mod. Lang. Notes

v. 42, April 1927.

American poetry, In American Year Book, 1927

What's in a name? Children, v. 22-23, Dec. 1927

Edited: Harte, B. Luck of roaring camp and selected

stories and poems. Macmillan 1928

An Old Court House, Motor Land, Nov. 1928

The Bret Harte legend, Univ. of Calif, chronical July '28

The Moral Chaucer, Univ. of Calif, publications in English,

Jan. 1929. . ..

The year of Bret Harte's birth, American Lit, March 1929

Technique of English Verse, Hairy Holt, 1950.

Color in Science and Poetry. Scientific Monthly, Jan. "30.

Review: Coolidge, D. Fighting men of the West, Univ. of

Calif, chronicle, Oct. '32

•

Bret Harte, Argonaut and exile, Houghton Mifflin, 1931.

Francis Bret Harte. Dictionary of American Biog. 1932.

Edited: Harte, F. B. Some Bret Harte satires. Frontier, Jan '33.

Bibliography of the writing of Bret. Harte in the magazine and

newspapers of California (1857-1871) Univ. of Calif, publications

in English, Sept. 1933

Names of citizens, American Speech, Feba. 1934

Edited: Child's tale of the Donner party. Westways Dec. '34.

Meaning of bacheler in middle English. Philological quarterly,

Jan. 1934.

Popular names for the mountain sheep. American speech Dec. '35

English geography in Malory's Morte d' Arthur, Modern Lang.

Review, April 1935.

Edited: Bret Harte: with comment, Book club of Calif. , Letters.

of Western authors, Feb. 1935

William Henry Thomas, Dictionarty of Amer. Biog. 1935

Three and fifty upon poor old Jack.. Philoi. Quart. July '35

Drama in a frontier theatre. Parrott presentation volume,

Princeton Univ. press, 1935.

Ordeal by Hunger; the story of the Donner party, Holt, 1936.
•« it M ii ii ii ii ii ii

•

or.* *-

Dry drive. Frontier and Midland. Spring 1936.

English composition: a laboratory course, Holt 1936.
<~John Phoenix, esqu. the veritable Squibob.
\_A life of Captain George H. Derby, U. S. A. Holt, 1937

Mexico by ear. , Calif, monthly April 1938.

Take your Bible in one hand: the life of William Henry Thomas,

SF The Colt press, .1939.

Review: The rivers of America, Sat. Rev. of Lit. Dec. 30, '39

East of the Giants, Holt, 1938, London Harrap Ltd. 1939.

Doctor's oral. Random KSCXXe house, 1939.

L?. Bianca dama della California, translation, 1940.

Btorm. New York, Random House, iy«L

Bret Harte upon Mark Twain in 1866. American Lit. HOT. '4l

She novelists take over poetry. Sat. Rev. of Lit. Feb. 8, «4l.

What la named? — towns, Islands, mountains, rivers, capes.

Bbiv. of Calif. Pub. In English, v. Ik 191*3.

The source of the name Oregon. American speech, v. 19, April '44.

Some amerlcan place-name problems. American speech, Dec. '44.

The all-Amerlcan season. New York Times mag. Sept. 24, '44.

The bad old summer time, " June 25, '44.

Comments on Hoere (n)-kil'. Amer. Speech. Oct. 1944.

The drama of spring. New York Times mag. Mar 26, '44.

Names on the land . . a historical account of place-naming in

the U.S. New York, Bandom House, 194$.

Map of the emigrant road . . by T. H. Jefferson, with an intro
duction and notes by Stewart. San Francisco, Calif. Historicl

society, 1945.

Heritage of names. Transatlantic, no. 26, Oct. 1945.

It pays to watch the sky, Nation's business, Nov. 1946.

Caribou as a Place Name in California. Cal. Folklore Quart.

Oct. 1946.

One of 120,000. Holiday, 1946.

Time's Petty Pace (fiction). Esquire, Nov. 1946.

Man, an autobiography . . . New York, Randan House, 1946.

McOinnity's Rock (fiction), Esquire, Jan. 1947.

The West as seen from the East. Pac. Spectator, I, 2, Spring 1947.

Also published as Chapter 46 in Literary History of the United

States, ed. Spiller Thorp, Johnson, and Canby, 1948.

Fire (novel) New York, Random House, 1948.

The Regional Approach to Literature. College English. April 1949.

Mountains of the West: South Central Panorama. Ford Times, March '49.

The Twilight of the Printed Book. Pac. Spectator, Winter, 1949.

Earth Abides (novel) New York, Random House, 1949.

Man's Names in Plymouth and Massachusetts in the Seventeenth Century.

U. C. Publications in English,

Tntth crushed to Earth at Gravelly Ford, Nevada. Pac. Spectator,

Winter, 1950.

The Biography of a Winter Storm. New York Times Mag., Feb. 26, '50.

A Proposal for Forestry Demonstration Areas along Highways. Journal

of Forestry, May 5, 1950.

The Year of the Oath (in collaboration with other professors of the

Univ. of Calif) New York, Doubleday, 1950.

Sheep Rock (novel) Random House, 1951.

Highway 40, Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

The Opening of the California Trail, Berkeley, University of

California Press, 1953.

The Two Moby-Dicks, American Lit., January 1954.

"The Careful Young Men," 184, #10, pp. 208-9. '56.

H.A. 1 Two volumes: Looking North, and Looking South, Boston 1957.

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Campus Report

•HE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER / University of California, Berkeley

Volume 1, Number 31

/V'goodlife" has dedication,
fulfillment, growth

Professor Stewart

A retired English professor with a list of 25 books to
his credit "probably wouldn't have become a novelist at
all" if the Berkeley of the 1930's had been the busy, fer
menting place it is today.

George R. Stewart, who describes himself as "a happy
writer with a passion for research," is probably best
known for his Storm, Earth Abides, and Fire. At the age
of 72, he is "more productive than he's ever been," at
work simultaneously on a history of the English Depart
ment, a dictionary of American place names to be pub
lished by Oxford University Press, and Not So Rich as
You Think, which will deal with waste disposal.

His newest book, scheduled to be published June 15,
is Good Lives, a biographical study of six men who, for
Stewart, "satisfied the potential in themselves."

William the Marshal, Joab ben-Zeruiah, Heinrich
Schliemann, Prince Henry the Navigator, Francisco
Eduardo Tresguerras and John Bidwell, though they
lived during different historical periods in different
societies under different stresses, were each able to "make
a good life in dangerous, restricted times."

What is the good life?

For Author Stewart it is fulfillment, dedication, intel
lectual growth. His six shared, he believes, "a great striv
ing to do something." They were "not necessarily happy
or pleasant people, but neither were they egotists."

Continued on page 4

For the academics and the Cl non-academic •" a miscellany of notes

Judging from the answers to a recent Campus Report
uery, "non-academic" is not an objectionable termi-
ology to Berkeley employees in that category, though

few commented that it was a "somewhat negative ap-
roach." Remarks ranged from "all that matters is that
be considered a part of the University" to "I don't
are on particle about my title so long as it doesn't affect

y pay scale, vacation, or fringe benefits."

Others suggested operational staff, but "we don't mind
eing called non-academic — in fact we feel it helps
lentify us as part of the University community," and
It's a clearly descriptive term when applied to employees
i a university set-up."

Berkeley personnel interested in teacher education
dvising and other civilian professional positions in the

Vietnam technical assistance program can talk with re
cruiters from the State Department's Agency for Inter
national Development during the week of June 19-24.
Interviews will be held on the second floor of the Old
Mint Building in San Francisco and can be scheduled by
calling 556-4300. Application forms also will be available
at all post offices.

• Courtesy discounts on hospital and clinic service
charges, and on materials which have been available
under limited circumstances at the UC San Francisco
Medical Center will be discontinued as of July 1. Dis
counts, said officials, in effect reduced the funds available
for teaching and other services.

Dental (San Francisco) and optometric (Berkeley)
services, however, will continue to be available.

In the expression of the genetic
factors, environment plays
an important role

Professor Stern

.... research is identifying

some of the reasons for congenital defects

and medical treatment may neutralize

the damage either before or after

it occurs. Many potential genetic cripples

will become completely functional

What Genetics' Curt Stern has called "the narrow
hereditary bridge" is formed when a microscopic fish-like
creature (the sperm cell) collides with the ripe, waiting
egg and the evolutionary past of two organisms is joined.

In man, the newly fertilized cell, if normal, contains 46
threadlike chromosomes (23 from each parent) strung
with thousands upon thousands of genes — the units of
inheritance — reproduced as the cell divides and redivides
until the organism is complete.

In chemical terms, the gene consists of a substance called
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and it is DNA and its mes
senger, RNA (ribonucleic acid), which governs the in
finitely complex chemistry of the cell and its activities.

The discovery in 1944 that DNA is the genetic substance
and the resulting development of molecular genetics re
search are probably "the great contribution of our age,"
says Dr. Stern. But for the man who calls himself a "classi
cal geneticist," an organism "is more than just a bunch
of chemicals. It is a highly regulated, coordinated organic
system. Genes do not act in isolation. They are embedded
in an interrelated harmonious whole."

It is this "whole" with which Dr. Stern is most inti
mately concerned.

The Berkeley geneticist, who studied under Nobelist
T. H. Morgan and is the author of one of the basic texts
on human genetics, is interested in two aspects of research:
human genetics (transmission of dominant or recessive
traits) , and developmental genetics. For the latter, he
works with the tiny Drosophila fruit fly, whose mutation
rate and 10-day reproduction cycle enable investigators to
observe both natural and induced genetic change through
hundreds of generations.

What he learns from his work with the famous little fly
often gives him clues to man's genetic problems. "Mosaic"
flies, produced in his laboratory, have both male and
female characteristics, and "there are rare human beings
who are human mosaics," he says, with similar bi-sexual,

conflicting characteristics. Recognition of the very rea
problems of the "transsexual" and possible surgical anc
psychological correction have recently been of increasing
interest to medical researchers.

The human mosaic is only one of the potential genetii
cripples. Missing or mutated (changed) genes, too man}
or too few chromosomes, and inbreeding which often in
creases recessive traits are among some of the many factor:
which can result in mental or physical defectives.

The 15-20% early abortion rate, says Dr. Stern, mean;
that there "has already been a culling," that the "born"
are a selected sample of more or less viable fetuses.

The so-called "bad" gene is not necessarily always z
negative factor, he points out. Research is identifying some
of the reasons for congenital defects and medical treatment
may neutralize the damage either before or after it occurs
Many potential genetic cripples will become complete!)
functional and the "bad" gene will have little or no real
effect on the quality of the human gene pool.

In addition, what may be a "bad" characteristic is one
situation may be "good" in another.

The sickle-cell syndrome, caused by an amino acid sub
stitution affecting the hemoglobin molecule, produce;
anemia under certain circumstances, but in malaria
infested country the same genetic trait acts as a protective
device. The syndrome often disappears from the genetic
inheritance when its protective properties are no longer
needed.

In the United States, inbreeding among humans has
almost ceased to be a problem as community isolation dis
appears. On the other hand, large population groups
separated geographically for long peroids of time have
evolved certain genetic characteristics of their own.

But although racial groups do have different genetic
endowments, "which are 'better' or 'poorer' depends on
variables of conditioning, opportunity and motivation in
a given situation."

With this issue, CAMPUS REPORT
completes its first year of publication. It will
not appear during the summer quarter.
The editor has been Saxon Stern — the
photographer, Dennis Galloway.

To assist in evaluating CAMPUS RE
PORT, we ask that you comment on the
following questions:

Should CAMPUS REPORT be con
tinued next fall?

Did you read CAMPUS REPORT
regularly? Why?

Please include the name of your depart
ment or office and whether you are faculty
or non-faculty. Send your comments to
Editor, Campus Report, 101 Sproul Hall.

inside the body, where there may be counter-balancing
forces."

And finally, what about the population explosion?

Although Dr. Stern shares the general worry about over
population and foresees a time when "you can't have more
people," he is less concerned about its genetic effects. How
ever, "people who have very large families today may be
depriving some future families of any children at all."

For the present, "we must educate ourselves to accept
the many-faceted inequalities of man. Changes in our
inequalities are going on incessantly, often independent
of our conscious actions and dependent on the social
system under which we live.

"But culture and social organization are not the ulti
mate forces which form us. They themselves are made
possible by our genes."

Survivors of a nuclear war "would
be those with the least damage, and
though they would presumably have
large numbers of abnormal children,
they would also have some normal off
spring. Society and civilization will be
the real casualties. The naked human
race would survive."

in a University it's taken for granted you' II be productive"

Continued from page 1

Good Lives, he says, is "obviously an old man's book."
It seems equally obvious that it is the result of the author's
concern with an evaluation of his own life and its many
contributions.

Has George Stewart's been a "good life?"

The professor who was awarded one of UC's prized
honorary degrees in 1963 doesn't know "if I fulfilled my
potential. I might have done more. Our hopes are always
more than our achievements."

Stewart was born in Pennsylvania and came to Cali
fornia at the age of 12 when his father's health forced
a move to a sunnier, milder climate. The family settled
in Pasadena, then a comparatively small town of 40,000.

He had "a good mother and father," a stable home life
as a boy. There was a strong religious influence — his
father was an elder in his church, two maternal uncles
were ministers. Although he moved away from formal
religion as he grew older, the beliefs of his family en
dowed him with "strong values," he says.

For a while, the boy wasn't sure what he wanted to do.
He went east to Princeton, where he received his A.B. in
English in 1917, came back to Berkeley for his M.A.,
crossed the country again to work for his doctorate at
Columbia. A year later he joined the Berkeley faculty as
an instructor, and became a full professor in 1942,
Emeritus in 1962.

During his teaching years, Stewart taught creative writ
ing and a wide variety of courses, especially in American
Literature.

He credits his writing not only to the doldrums of the
30's, but also partly to Berkeley historian H. L. Bolton,
who made the American West, its history and literature
so exciting for a young graduate student that nearly all
of his books have been somehow related to it in one way

or another. His interest in ecological problems — "why all
these things got together, the little parts making the
whole" — is partially an outgrowth of his concern for
California's past and future.

He wrote his first general book, about the Donner Party,
"because it was such an awfully good story and it hadn't
ever been presented properly." Subsequently, he walked
the California emigrant trail through Nevada, over the
Sierra and across the desert. From this experience came
The California Trail.

His study is filled with mementos he has picked up in
his wanderings: a patched-together blue and white pitcher
he believes was "tossed out of some wagon train" which
he found in pieces beside the famous old trail; a 4-pound
single jack mining hammer discovered at the bottom of
the American River Canyon, "probably dating back to
1880 or older."

The hammer is familiar to his readers. It was used as
a symbol in Earth Abides, a book which has turned out
to be a very enduring work. "It keeps a remarkable
vitality." Storm, published as a paperback and included
in the Modern Library series, is probably his most
popular book.

Although he "started too late, so I'm not really very
good at it," he has fished in New Zealand, Australia,
Japan, several countries in Europe, and only recently
returned from a two-months trip to Chile.

For the past three years, in addition to writing and
travel, he has been president of the Berkeley Faculty Club
and "it is the University that's really been my life."

"It gives a man freedom intellectually, and opportuni
ties to do what you want. It's taken for granted that you'll
be productive. It's a good place," he says, "to try to live the
'good life.' "

Employee promotions

Employees recently promoted include Herbert Blech-
man, Administrative Analyst III for the Campus Research
Office; Paul Duffey, Laboratory Mechanician at the Space
Sciences Laboratory; Rosemary Fagg, Principal Clerk for
University Extension/Continuing Education of the Bar;
Vernon Hawthorne, Laboratory Technician III in Zool
ogy/Fisheries; Alberta Marenco, Senior Clerk for the
Accounting Office; Geraldine Peabody, Principal Clerk in
Social Welfare; Eloy Pena, Senior Offset Duplication Ma
chine Operator for the Central Stenographic Bureau; and

Diane Quinn, Principal Clerk at the Survey Researcn
Center.

Others are Betty Robinson, Principal Clerk for Univera
sity Extension/Business Administration; Patricia Romeol
Principal Clerk in the Graduate Division; Ellen Sclieti
straete, Secretary-Stenographer in the Graduate Division;
Margaret Thoene, Principal Clerk for University Exten-i
sion/Program Processing; Mary Lee Widener, Administra-i
live Assistant for Gifts and Endowments; and Lawrencm
Young, Laboratory Technician III at the Cancer Research
Genetics Laboratory.

Campus Report

Volume 1, Number 31

EDnflffli

a ear \>\

June 1, 1967

Olfuc of ihe Chancellor

Editor • 2137

314

INDEX

academic freedom, 186
Alger, Horatio, 4, 5, 233
American Names Society, 171, 172
American Place Names, 3, 17-19, 40, 43
American Ways of Life. 78, 193, 195, 201
Armchair Strategists, 219
atomic bomb, 82, 162, 181, 183
Author's Guild, 48, 49

Backus, Joseph, 35, 210

Baker, Howard, 84

Bancroft, H.H. , 197, 228

Barzun, Jacques, 131

"Beyond the River" 63-65

Bohemian Club, 173, 174, 218

Bolton, Herbert, 20, 228

Book Club of California, 239

Book of the Month Club, 38, 142

Brandt & Brandt, 113, 11^

Bret Harte. 25, 28, 29, 31, 108-110, 115, 229, 236, 262

Erode, Robert, 1?4, 254

Cady, Howard, 177, 210

Caldwell, James, 185

California Trail. 6l, 119, 190, 205, 209-211, 214

Camp, Charles, 190, 217, 219

Carpenter, Kenneth, 191, 192

Chit-Chat Club, 218, 219

Colt Press, 133, 239

Columbia University, 18-21, 23, 52

Commins, Saxe, 41, 140-142, 262

Committee of Vigilance. 189, 246

Coney, Donald, 228

Cosmos Club, 21?

Cowley, Malcolm, 93-96, 104

Cross, Ira, 230

Davis, H.L. , 86-88

Department of English of the University of California on the

Berkeley CampusT 26, 33, 222, 223
Deutsch, Monroe, 135
Disney, Walt, 48, 167

Doctor's Oral. 44, 45, 50-52, 126-133, 137, 147, 148, 246, 264
Doubleday & Vo. , 177

315

Earth Abides. 1, 43, 45, 49, 53, 68-71, 81, 82, 126, 143-151,
154, 165, 179-184, 195, 213, 237, 246, 253, 262

East of the Giants. 12, 44, 57, 101, 111, 119, 121-126, 129,
141, 148, 165, 166, 229, 236

Evans, Bertram, 232, 233

Faulkner, William, 76, 103

Fire. 1, 9, 10-12, 34, 46, 52, 53, 68, 73, 94, 119, 126,
^35-147, 158, 159, 161-165, 195, 232, 233, 261
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 93, 112, 168
Ford, Henry, 170

Forester, G.S., 105, 213, 219, 26l
Friends of the Bancroft Library, 229
Frost, Robert, 89-92

Gardner, David P. , 188

Gayley, Charles Mills, 20, 31

"General Grant", 64-, 65

Gerbode, Frank, 150

Good Lives. 183, 211, 214-216. 243

Grabhorn, Jane (see Colt Press)

Grether, Ewald, 230

Hammond, George, 229

Hardy, Thomas, 232, 234

Hart, James D. , 34, 165, 227, 228

Hart, Walter Morris, 26, 218, 222, 223

Haynes, Duncan E. , 214

Hemingway, Ernest, 76, 84, 105

Henty, G.A. , 4, 233

Hildebrand, Joel H. , 25, 29, 30, 67, 218, 222

Holt, 44, 114, 118, 129, 130

Houghton Mlfflin, 29, 184, 195

Hughes, Merritt, 51

"I Wish I Might" 62, 64
Iliad. 101

Jackson, Joseph Henry, 45, 168, 219
James, Henry, 93, 99, 158
John Phoenix. 120, 229, 26l
Johnson, Paul, 36

J V

316

edy, Arthur, 15
Kennedy, J.F. , inauguration, 90-92
Knopf, Alfred, 114, 115, 130, 240
Krapp, George Phillip, 52, 132

Lehnan, Ben, 32, 33, 50, 163
Leopold, Starker, 1§1
Loewenburg, Jacques, 185
Lott, Milton, 77
Lynch, Jim, 188

i-ian. 42, 71-73, 77, 78, 100, 156-158, 200, 246, 262

McGraw Hill, 209-211

Mclntosh & Otis, 45, 46

MacLeish, Archibald, 92, 233, 234

Marquand, J.P. , 218

Miles, Josephine, 17, 122

Modern Metrical Technique, 22, 23

Morse, V/lllard P., 262-264

N.A. 1, 161, 202, 253

Names on the Land, 3, 20, 33, 43, 151-154, 241

Not So Rich As You Think, 237-239, 246

On the Beach, 184

The Opening of the California Trail, 197, 229
T5rd"eal by Hunger, 11, 12, 25, 26, 36, 39, 57, 72, 113ffl21,
137, 144, 184, 210, 211, 229, 234, 246

PG&E, 135, 180

Paris Review interviews, 83, 93, 102, 104

Park, David, 165

Parrott, T.M. , 14, 16

Perkins, Maxwell, 41, 110-112

Pickett's Charge, 144, 203-208, 214, 246

Priestley, Herbert I., 228

Puritan Ethic, 55, 56, 196, 197, (also see Wasp)

Random House, 45, 47, 72, 130, 136, 137, 177, 195, 240
Reader's Digest, 72, 73
Richnond, Hugh, 128
Roberts, Harry, 19, 229

31?

Sandburg, Carl, 86-91, 1?0

Sauer, Carl, 191

Schlieinann, Heinrich, 215, 216

Seelye, John, 229, 246

Shakespeare Crisis, 213, 224, 225, 247, 248

Sheep Rock"; 144, 145, 155, 156, 166, 189-192, 202, 229

Simpson, Louis, 85

Snow, C.P. , 212

Spaeth, J. Duncan, 16

Sproul, Robert Gordon, 257, 264

Stein, Gertrude, 84

Steinbeck, John, 45

Stewart, Andrew, 3, 4

Stewart, George Rippey,

Personal Life: family background, l-5> 242, 243; high school,
6-8, 106, 107; at Princeton, 13-17, 21; U.C. study, 6, 19, 23;
at Columbia, 18-23, 52; Ph.D. thesis, 21-23, 55? at University
of Michigan, 23, 169, 170; Army, 5, 6, 18, 23, 28; in Berkeley,
38, 39, 86ff92; in Mexico, 87, 92, 126, 129, 13^, 251, 253;
in Greece, 193-197; Navy work, 159-161, 252; in Hollywood, 167;
health. 6, 23, 214- , 221, 250, 251; hobbles, bookbinding, 8, 19,
229, 24l, 242, fishing, 250-252; clubs, 65, 66, 174, 175, 217-
220, 243; teaching, (see University of California, Department
of English)

Opinions; theme of ecology, 11, 12, 69, 103, 146, 147, 237-
239; theme of the primitive, 49, 50; first novels, 236, 237;
historical truth, 54, 208, 209, 230, 231; future of books,
241, 244, 245; agents, 45-48, 113, 114; book reviewing, 40,
41, 83, 16?, 168; fans, 41-43, 125, 130; working with publishers,
71, 110, 240, 241; education, 54, 55; on fiction vs. non-fiction,
12, 118; self-reliance, I8ff22; honor system (plagiarism), 259,
260; award-granting, 254-258; Emerson, Thoreau, 21, 22, 74, 100;
aging and retirement, 28, 56, 221-223; "slowing down"
(motivation), 202, 203, 211-215, 248, 249; luck (adversity),
7, 25, 32, 48, 61, 112, 113, 129, 137, 215-217; favorite writers,
76, 231-234; oral history, 208, 209, 227, 229, 230; regional
writing, 225-227; private publishing, 133, 239-241; courage,
76, 183; racial greatness, 182, 300; expatrlatism, 82, 92, 93

Writing; stages of (Cowley), 94fflOO; choice of style, 151,
152, 156, 157; condensations, 72, 73; habits, 9, 13, 95fflOO,
104, 105; talking about it, 34, 85, 86; collaborating, 35,
36, 64; the chapter and the paragraph, 10, 148, 149; research
(mapping), 9-11, 19, 28, 52, 108, 138-141, 151, 225-227;
choice of subjects, 11, 12, 68, 162-164; favorite passages,

318

119, 123, 123, 142-147, 1552-155; the mask, 51, 166, 189,

100, 246, 247; motive power, 101, 102; organization (plotting),

70, 117, 121, 123, 126, 137, 153, 158, 247

Unpublished Works: Autobiography, Iff 8; date book, 5, 57,
58, 100, 194, 214; names book, 28, 60; plays, 61-66; ideas,
60, 66, 67, 79-81, 227; satires, 79, 80; (see Shakespeare
Crisis)

Stewart, Jack, l6l, 164, 231

Stewart, Theodosia Burton, 1, 4, 38, 39, 57, 64, 135, 151,

169-171, 251, 253

3tewartfs Law of Honors and Prizes, 257, 258
Storm, 1, 10-12, 3^, 38ff53, 94, 126, 129, 134ffl47, 151, 154,

158, 161, 165, 195, 212, 232, 234, 260-262
Strong, Edward, 65, 66

Take Your Bible in Your Hand. 133

Tatlock, Jack, 29, 30, 51

Techniques of English Verse, 23

Thome s, William Henry, 133

Thorndyke, Ashley Horace, 21

To California by Covered Wagon, 197

Tolman, Kathleen, 126

Trask, Parker, 159, 161, 191, 252

Truman, Harry, 54, 209

U.S. 40, 28, 193-195, 202

University of California, G.R.S. study at, 6, 19, 20, 23;
Department of English, 25-34; students, 74-77, 84; Drama
Section Club, 65, 66; literary life, 85, 124-126; zoology
department, 87, 88; clubs, 173-175, 217-220; loyalty oath,
175, 184-189; Centennial Honors Committee, 254-258; Berkeley
Fellows, 255, 256, 258; The Bancroft Library, 228-230;
Regional Oral History Office, 227-230

University of Nevada, 187, 188

Utter, Robert P. , 163, 164

Van Doren, Carl, 21

W.P.A. project on Western writing, 36-38

Wasp, 196, 197

Wells, Chauncey, 189

'"//here is Mr. Winkleton?", 64, 65

Whipple, T.K., 84

319

Wilder, Thornton, 106, 139
Williams, Annie Laurie, 45, 46, 48
Wilson, Edmund, 93
Wilson, Garff, 254

Year of the Qat.hT 176, 177, 184-189, 194

Years of the CJtyT 49, 53, 148, 158, 195ff202, 213, 214

Suzanne Bassett Riess

Grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Graduated
from Goucher College with a B.A. in English in
1957. Post-graduate work at the University of
London and the University of California, Berkeley,
in English and art history.

Feature writing and assistant woman's page editor,
Bethlehem, Pa. , Globe -Times. Free-lance writing
and editing in Berkeley and volunteer work on
starting a new Berkeley newspaper.

Editor in Regional Oral History Office since 1960,
interviewing in the fields of art, cultural history,
environmental design, photography, and University
history.

1 3 9 :. 5 3

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